Goa: Land grabbing started in 1985, had told Parrikar about missing documents, says Sudin

PANAJI: Power minister Ramkrishna ‘Sudin’ Dhavalikar said on Tuesday that land grabbing cases in Goa began in 1985, and that politicians and government officials are involved. The senior minister said that from 2000 to 2004, he informed then CM Manohar Parrikar about missing documents from the department of archives and archaeology.
Dhavalikar said that when the Progressive Democratic Front (PDF) formed the state government in the 80s, a lot of land grabbing complaints were received.
“A lot of people are involved in land grabbing, including government employees and politicians,” he said. “When I was minister of archives and archaeology from 2000 to 2004, I moved a note to then CM Manohar Parrikar about the missing. When we took up digitisation of documents, we realised that a lot of pages were not there.” The power minister said that some documents were in such a bad condition, they were not able to digitise them.
Dhavalikar said that CM Pramod Sawant took the right step to investigate land grab cases, and that the investigation will unearth secrets.
On Monday, Sawant said that the SIT investigation into land grabbing in Goa revealed that 92 properties, the owners of which don’t live in the state, have been grabbed illegally.
He said there may be more than one gang involved in property theft.
The CM had said that during the next assembly session, the government would bring in an amendment to take over ‘no man’ properties. “No man properties are those properties (owned by persons) who have expired, or who live out of the state, or their legal heirs do not live in Goa. We will also make a provision for a situation in which a legal heir returns to claim the property,” Sawant said.
The chief minister had said that the legal heir would have to submit documents to prove their claim, and the property would be returned to the heir.