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Green row over new unit Metamorphoses into political puzzle in Goa

Sandesh Prabhudesai in Panaji

The campaign by five Goan villages, with active support of the local Church, against an upcoming industrial unit, suspected to cause air, noise and water pollution, is becoming curiouser. As political parties trade charges and counter-charges and locals harden their stance, the company promoters wonder what is next.

Meta Strips, a Sushil Khaitan-promoted Rs 2.5 billion project for manufacture brass sheets out of imported scrap, was to come up with Spanish collaboration on a hillock of Sancoale village near the port town of Vasco. However, the project ran into trouble when locals resisted it on environmental grounds.

The Congress government set up the one-man Justice Sindhkar commission to probe into the pollution aspect and irregularities involved in approving it. However, the new coalition government of the Congress breakaway faction led by Chief Minister Francisco Sardinha and the Bharatiya Janata Party, scrapped the commission soon after coming to power in November 1999.

"Why should we go ahead with such an enquiry if the local people are not in favour of it?" asks Sardinha He had also assured to take a decision on the project.

But Sardinha's government, for inexplicable reasons, only managed to set up a new enquiry which was not asked to probe the irregularities. Sardinha prefers to term it a debate among experts. The panel is to be headed by a retired judge (not Justice Sindhkar). The agitators have obviously opposed this move.

Sardinha now wants to appoint experts suggested by the agitators, besides professors, the director of environment and director of metallurgical department on the panel.

The issue had swayed public opinion and determined electoral results in the past. (The Congress had come to be seen as pro-project.)

"We will scrap Meta Strips if it is proved to be pollutant. But how can we know it unless the experts debate over it?" asks Sardinha, much in the manner of his predecessor Luizinho Faleiro of the Congress.

The project was cleared within six days by the Congress regime without even holding the high-power Assembly coordination committee meeting, a legal requirement. Faleiro was the industries minister that time.

But Pratapsing Rane, the then chief minister, is the Assembly Speaker now, and supports the Sardinha government. Alex Sequeira, who had then played a major role as the Industrial Development Corporation chairman, is the industries minister today.

Business

Goa