NH AGITATION WILL BE INTENSIFIED WITH PRESENT ALIGNMENTS

MARGAO: A widely attended meeting at Margao’s Lohia Maidan, called by the National Highway Diversion Action Committee threatened to intensify the agitation against the proposed national highway widening with the present alignments.

Speaker after speaker made it clear that they were not against the highways per se but did not want the highways to be constructed in such a way that it would affect people’s houses or affect the environment.  And threatened that if the November 24 house committee meeting did into take the people’s views into consideration then as part of the agitation, protests could be even held outside IFFI functions.

The meeting also requested the leader of opposition, Mr Manohar Parrikar, who was present for the meeting, to take up the issue with the house committee, and raise all the objections possible to stop the highway in the present alignment.

The meeting also requested the government to take local experts who know local conditions, instead of outside experts.  "There are lot of experts, Goans who are engineers and architects. They can decide on the roads and new alignments instead of outside experts," stated Mr Sunil Dessai, the convenor of NHDAC.

The meeting that saw 22 speakers, saw the leader of opposition, Mr Manohar Parrikar telling the 1500 plus strong crowd that a broad road was mainly required was from Mapusa to Margao due to the heavy traffic and beyond Mapusa and Navelim, an increase of 2 metres on each side of the present road would suffice.

Mr Raju Mangueshkar, general secretary, CPI said that these projects are "anti-people projects" and "the government should not put up these anti-people projects and have people come out on the roads and that these roads should be in consultation with the people."

Mr Francisco Pacheco, ex-tourism minister, and said that he is "with the people" and does not want the road in the present alignment as people are affected."

Mr Oscar Rebello, ex-GBA convenor said the battle is actually of land and not of road.  "Everybody wants land and the fight is by the people who want to protect the land," said Mr Siddarth Karapurkar, who spoke about extra acquisition that would be required. 

"Local roads will be closed because of highway and lot of more local roads have to be constructed that would run parallel to the highway for which drawings and study have not been done"

Speakers also the criticised the PWD Minister because he backed the projects and he wanted the roads to come up anyhow.

In an incident that could portent future alignments in the South, Mr Radharao Gracias told Mr Parrikar that if he should give up his ideology then lot of Catholics in the South would support him and Parrikar replied that his ideology was to protect Goa and to ensure that no anti-people projects came up. (NT)