Sanguem sees clash between anti-IIT protesters and police

MARGAO: Reminiscent of last year's agitation at Melaulim against the proposed IIT project, villagers of Sanguem, mostly comprising women, clashed with police at the proposed IIT campus site at Sanguem on Monday. Voicing their opposition to the project, the women prevented surveyors from carrying out demarcation of plots boundaries earmarked for the project.
As police forced their way through the mob to facilitate the demarcation exercise, agitators alleged police excesses while government officials claimed to have completed the task amidst the protest.
DySP Nilesh Rane, sub-divisional police officer, Quepem, who led the police force, tried to prevail upon the agitators to make way for the surveyors to proceed to the site to carry out their official duties, but the protesters refused to budge. They claimed that the hills were being used for plantation and the fields were being cultivated by them and that they would be deprived of their livelihoods if the IIT project was allowed to come up at the site.
Repeated calls from the police to the protesters to clear the path leading to the proposed IIT site went unheeded. With the arrival of reinforcements, police pushed the agitators away amidst screams by women who complained that they were trampled by the cops. As the protesters confronted the police over the matter, official sources said that the surveyors completed the demarcation process.
The protesters questioned the stance of Sanguem MLA and social welfare minister Subhash Phal Dessai who has strongly supported the IIT project in Sanguem. Recently, he had cautioned people against opposing the project as he said that would prevent other employment-oriented projects from being set up in Sanguem and thus deprive local youth of better livelihood opportunities. He stressed that the proposed site of 7.5lakh sqm belongs to the government and is barren and that it would be difficult to find such a vast contiguous parcel of land elsewhere in the state.
Protests by villagers of Melaulim, Sattari, against the IIT project had forced the government to shift the project, and the Sanguem land was proposed as an alternative.