According to the available information, the Karnataka state government is planning to acquire the land in Goa for providing the permanent rehabilitation to the migrant workers staying in the state. If this happens then it will be a unique case in itself, as till date no other state government might have done such kind of thing before. This may lead to more such incidents of acquiring the lands in various other states too. This move perhaps initiated by the Karnataka government in the view of demolition of hutments in Biana by the Goa government.
Based on the news published by the national daily Hindu, Kannada Development Authority Chairman L. Hanumanthaiah informed the media that, he has requested the Goa government to provide the land to the migrants and homeless people staying in Goa, whose hutments have been demolished by the state government at Baina beach, but in case government failed to do so, the Karnataka state government will purchase the land at the cost of Rs. 15 Crore and it will be used for the rehabilitation of the homeless people of Karnataka in Goa.
It may be recalled that recently Goa government had demolished more than 300 hutments in Biana evicting all the families from the beach area rendering hundreds of people homeless. Based on this incident the authorities have requested to the Karnataka State Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to make an effort to get the plot from Goa government to construct the houses for the evicted families.
The Goa-based Kanada organization “The Kanada Sangha” has also been asked to identify the land for the purpose of rehabilitation process in Goa, informed the KDA chairman. Last year, Karnataka Tourism and industries minister, R V Deshpande has discussed with the Goa government to provide the permanent rehabilitation to the displaced Kanada speaking people of Baina beach whose hutments has been demolished by the Goa government on the basis of CRZ issue. In this, most of the migrants are the construction labors and all of them reside in the hutments for several decades. According to the sources, all of them even had an electricity connections, water connection and Ration Cards given by the Goa government.
If you look at the situation here, it is very clear that all those who had ration cards, water and electricity connections for the decades cannot be termed as migrants since they already having the voting rights and that makes them the residents of the state. Here we are not talking about how they managed to get the ration cards and electricity connection as it is very obvious that elected members have arranged all that to create their vote bank. But one thing is difficult to understand and that is ‘If the vote bank had been created, then why it has been forced to close down by the ruling government? What is the real motive behind this move? Is this also a part of some dirty politics or just a routine way of doing the things? Everyone is migrants in the another state. But the fact is that finally all of us are Indian. It is a very controversial issue and only the readers can give the best suggestions and feedbacks on this issue.
Source: Various Sources
Edited by Goa Prism News Desk
