Villagers reject Goa govt’s overture to exclude temple from IIT campus

Panaji: Goa authorities’s overture to exclude 45,000 sq. (sq) metres (m) from the Indian Institute of Technology’s (IIT)-Goa campus has been rebuffed by the residents of Xel Melaulim village, as they’ve reiterated their opposition to organising of the institute citing environmental hazards similar to razing as much as 10 lakh sq m of pristine forestland.

They have warned of intensifying the stir, if their calls for are usually not paid heed to.

The villagers rejected the state authorities’s proposal following a Cabinet resolution for the exemption on Wednesday.

“In a single day, you can pass a Cabinet resolution that 45,000 sq m be excluded from the setting up of the IIT. Then, in a single day you can also take a decision to denotify the land for the institute. Why can’t you do what we want?” Shankar Naik, a resident of Xel Melaulim, the place the proposed IIT everlasting campus is being deliberate, informed media individuals.

Another villager Shubham Shivolkar echoed Naik and mentioned their grievances are but to be redressed.

“We have written to Chief Minister Pramod Sawant that the land is our sole source of sustenance. Why do you want to evict us?” he requested.

On Wednesday, CM Sawant had introduced that the village temple and the encompassing land in Xel Melaulim, measuring as much as 45,000 sq m, could be excluded through the development of a everlasting campus for IIT-Goa.

“Another parcel of land of a similar area size will be included for the IIT campus. I request those opposing the project to withdraw their opposition,” the CM had appealed.

But, the unfazed villagers have despatched a contemporary letter to the CM reiterating their stand.

“We are shocked beyond belief that the state government is trying to portray itself like a kind donor, giving 45,000 sq m of our land for our temple. The entire 12 lakh sq m, bearing survey number 67/1 of Xel Melaulim, belong to us, including religious places of worship, agricultural land, forests, grazing ground, and water resources,” said the contemporary letter, undersigned by 104 villagers.

“The morally, legally and socio-economically correct position is that the land belongs to local communities and not the state government,” it added.

“We are dependent on our land for sustenance. We oppose the setting up of the IIT campus in our village. We will intensify our agitation, if the state government refuses to pay heed to our warning and still goes ahead with its plan,” Shivolkar warned.

However, the federal government has all alongside maintained that the villagers haven’t any rights over the land since it’s a state property.

Xel Melaulim village is positioned in Goa’s jap nook within the foothills of the Western Ghats and over 50 kilometres (km) away from the state capital Panaji.

Rumblings of protest and murmurs of discontent have been began by residents of Xel Melaulim village and from adjoining hamlets in early February, when the state authorities made it recognized that it could hand over the land for the IIT’s everlasting campus in May.

The proposed IIT campus’s setting has a dense vegetation interspersed with cashew bushes that the villagers claimed have sustained them for generations.

The agitating villagers have been demanding that the campus be shifted to a different location that doesn’t entail such extreme ecological harm.

Though Xel Melaulim village falls in an eco-sensitive zone, it hasn’t been formally declared as one as a result of the state authorities’s notification to that impact continues to be pending.

Goa was allotted an IIT in 2014, but it surely has been performing from a brief campus on the Goa Engineering College.

Earlier, although the state authorities had recognized two websites — in Canacona and Sanguem sub-districts – to arrange a everlasting IIT campus, each have been scrapped as a consequence of public protests and after the opposition had alleged a land rip-off.