Chaos over possession of playground mar Dicarpale gram sabha

MARGAO: The issue of Davorlim playground rocked the gram sabha of Dicarpale-Davorlim village panchayat on Sunday with majority of villagers demanding that it be handed over to the church for maintenance and some gram sabha members opposing it.

Villagers accused the panchayat of failing to properly maintain the playground. However, some villagers including former sarpanch Tulsidas Desai and Punam Prbahudesai came out in opposition of the demand to hand over the ground to the church and demanded that the panchayat take up the maintenance work at the earliest.

The issue was however cleverly handled by the sarpanch Beena Kulkarni and the panchayat secretary, who responded that the decision on handing over the playground would be taken only after the panchayat takes possession of the said playground. The members of the gram sabha, who were demanding spot resolution of handing over the playground to the Davorlim church finally agreed to the sarpanch’s decision and the situation normalised.

A resolution was also adopted to set up garbage treatment plants at the existing housing projects to help end the garbage issue that plagues the semi-urbanised village of Davorlim.

Villagers holding placards demanded a halt to permissions to new housing projects and immediate clearance of garbage piled up in the village. They accused the elected representatives of not taking the garbage issue seriously and allowing new housing projects without provision for garbage disposal.

The sarpanch Kulkarni could not provide satisfactory answers which further angered the villagers. The villagers showed photographs to the panchayat members of garbage-strewn nullahs and said that the contaminated water is not even suitable for irrigation. Andrew Rebello claimed that the panchayat has issued occupancy certificate to a building though it does not kept the required setback.

A resolution was also adopted by the 140-odd villagers to make provision for parking in Dicarpale and Davorlim wards and urged the sarpanch to do it using 14th finance funds. The panchayat secretary read out the audit reports of 2017-2018 and pointed out that the budget preparation was fictitious and that the panchayat secretary has to make all efforts to recover the Rs 21 lakh arrears of house tax.

The audit report further pointed out that there are in all 35 illegal constructions in the village on which the panchayat is asked to immediate action. Eight panchayat members were present for the gram sabha, which ended at 1 pm.