The People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), which has come out with a fact-finding report on the eviction of residents of Baina beach in Vasco da Gama in south Goa, has said that the dwellings should not be demolished till the residents are shifted to houses allotted under the rehabilitation scheme.
As many as 207 families, most of them poor migrants from Karnataka, have been protesting against the authorities who refuse to recognise them as legitimate residents, for over four months. A four-member delegation of PUCL led by its national secretary P. Laxminarayana conducted the study.
The PUCL has also demanded that requirements such as the size of the family, proximity to the place of work and schools, and availability of other facilities be considered while constructing houses for these people.
Mr. Laxminarayana said that before implementing the government order dated August 21, 2014, which asked the residents to vacate their dwellings, the authorities must ensure that alternative housing was provided to them. This did not happen in last July when another batch of dwellings was demolished in the middle of the monsoon without giving them alternative shelters.
In the light of their discussion with the Chief Secretary and South Goa Collector, the affected people and the activists felt that popular prejudices against the so-called “outsiders” were repeatedly reinforced through sections of the media and the public to legitimise the inhuman actions of the administration. The contributions of these “outsiders” to Goa’s development were being ignored, they alleged.
U. Ramdas Rao of the PUCL said that the Coastal Regulation Zone Act and the Disaster Management Act had been used against the Baina residents. Urban land such as these were being evacuated to make it available to the land mafia. However, illegalities of land sharks, developers, as well as public authorities were conveniently overlooked.
In this context, Mr. Rao said that the displacement had an underlying agenda to appropriate and transfer land from the poor to the rich and the powerful, in the service of the neo-liberal model of corporate-led development, which he said, had regained a momentum with the coming to power of the Narendra Modi government at the Centre.
