NT NETWORK
PANAJI
Seeking comments from the department of agriculture as regards the status of the land at Ambdey, in Sanguem taluka, on which a distillery/ brewery factory project of Vani Agro Farms Private Limited is set to come up, Minister for Agriculture Vijai Sardesai on Tuesday suggested that the factory could be shifted to an industrial estate by reviewing permission granted to it by the Investment Promotion Board (IPB), rather than destroying 900 coconut trees existing on the particular land.
“Is a plot of 900 coconut trees not a coconut orchard? Is it an industrial plot and can such rampant killing of coconut trees be allowed only in the name of employment creation? The director of agriculture may comment,” states a June 6 noting of the Minister for Agriculture, written on the May 15 inspection report of the department of agriculture about the Ambdey land.
The Minister for Agriculture, speaking to ‘The Navhind Times,’ said that the particular ongoing exercise is in conformity to the pre-poll agenda of his Goa Forward Party, and even though his party is supporting the BJP government, its core agenda has not undergone any change. “I have already spoken to the Chief Minister on this issue and requested him to review all decisions of the IPB taken during the regime of the previous government, as also shift the distillery/ brewery project to an industrial estate, as such units come under Red Category, and therefore just cannot be set up in an orchard land,” he noted.
Sardesai also informed that some of the coconut trees in the area are found to be affected by the bud rot disease, and if ignored, this disease would spread to all 900 trees and kill them. “It would, therefore, be in the interest of these large number of coconut trees to move the said project into an industrial estate,” he reiterated.
The Investment Promotion Board of Goa, with the Chief Minister as chairman, through one of its early decisions had given in-principle clearance to the VAFPL project in January 2015, despite the selected land being marked as “orchard land.”
The inspection report carried out by a zonal agricultural office of the department of agriculture on May 10, 2017 states that the plot of M/s Vani Agro Pvt Ltd is on land bearing Survey No 81/2-A and Survey No 81/2-B in the Ambdey village. “There are approximately 900 numbers of coconut trees in the plot,” it adds, pointing out that “11 trees were found to be dead due to the attack of bud rot disease, and the situation appears to be continuing and affecting other trees too.”
“There are approximately 10 coconut tree stumps, which appear to be cut over a period of time that is two or three years back,” the report further observes, maintaining that “the plot does not appear to be irrigated or maintained.”
It is learnt that a former Sanguem MLA was instrumental in bringing this project to Goa by initially making the company contribute a fund to a school. However, there has been strong opposition to the project from the locals.
Incidentally, the government, in December 2015 had first made it public that it wished to declassify coconut palm (cocos nucifera) from the list of trees in the Goa Daman and Diu Preservation of Trees Act, 1984. This decision sidelined the government permission for felling coconut trees in the state.
The Goa Forward Party to which Vijai Sardesai belongs had launched an agitation against the declassification of coconut palm from the list of trees in the legislation, and further opposed the Vani Agro Farm project. The GFP had even managed to obtain coconut as its election symbol and contested the 2017 state assembly polls on this symbol winning three seats.