FRIDAY, JULY 05, 2024
Team Herald
MARGAO: The New Year for Velsao locals has not started on a promising note as they once again took to the streets on Saturday to protest the blocking of their century-old ‘Right of Way’ by the Railway authorities, who are carrying out double tracking works through the village and its surrounding areas.
The locals have also sent written objections to the South Goa Collector, Mormugao Mamlatdar, Directorate of Settlement & Land Records, South Western Railway (SWR), Rail Vikas Nigam Limited (RVNL), Verna Police and Railway Police, complaining about the alleged encroachments on their privately-owned lands.
The citizens including those in their 90s gathered at the site on Saturday morning, holding placards and lamented the destruction of age-old stormwater drains, a staircase that helps them access near the tracks as well as precious trees, etc.
The Velsao villagers along with Goencho Ekvott (GE) and former Cortalim MLA and ex-Environment Minister Alina Saldanha conducted a site inspection where the locals had reported the violation of their constitutional right to their ‘right of way’ to access their residences by RVNL using heavy machinery last Saturday without any land acquisition process or even without an intimation to the villagers who reside along the Western side of the existing SWR track at Velsao.
GE Founder Orville Dourado Rodrigues made a fervent appeal to Chief Minister Pramod Sawant to listen to the desperate pleas of the locals, who have been peacefully residing along the railway tracks in a self-sustainable manner for generations.
He stated that the future generations will not forgive those who have decided to look the other way and pretend that all is fine, when the local population nearly all of whom are Goans, are subjugated to coal dust and unrelenting noise pollution of the passing coal rakes mostly when the residents are supposed to be fast asleep.
He also appealed to the local legislator Antonio Vas to lead the anti-coal and double tracking movement.
Ninety-six-year-old Minguelinho Mascarenhas, possibly one of the oldest living persons in the area, expressed his pent up feelings against the government authorities whose authoritarian approach to the despised double track has not found favour despite several past agitations across the length of track.
Mascarenhas appealed to Velsao residents to actively participate in this struggle to breathe clean air.
Lamenting how the government had tried to browbeat her when she was the minister, Saldanha said she was denied the ministry in her second term as she opposed the three linear projects in Goa.
Vowing to continue the struggle against coal and double tracking with all the means at her disposal, Saldanha said Goa is heading for total destruction if the railways have their way against the rights of the local population.
Sandra Dax Rodrigues, one of the most severely-affected locals, complained that her nearly 300-year-old heritage residence has suffered immense damage due to the frequent passing of overloaded coal trains.
She showed her property documents from the Portuguese era (since legally translated into English) wherein there was clarity that her parcel of land extended right upto the existing railway track.
Rodrigues said that she was shocked that her ‘Right of Way’, which the family has used since 1800s has totally been obliterated, to the extent that the staircase built in 1890s to go across the tracks to the local market, church, panchayat, school and main public road has disappeared.
Pointing to the curry leaves coated with coal dust, Rodrigues complained that she is unable to use her motor vehicle as the road has been dug up by RVNL. She along with other villagers appeared determined to fight through legal recourse.
Later, GE convened a meeting in Velsao which was attended by representatives of various NGOs across Goa, the Velsao-Pale-Issorcim Panchayat and the villagers.
Most residents complained of being treated as second class citizens by an elected government in their own land. It was also pointed out that the local village panchayat has been continuously standing up against the Railways. The future course of action for the villagers was deliberated upon.
