Goa
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Panaji: MP Naik to Meet Sharma to Insist on Denotification of SEZs in View of Court Verdict
- Sat, Nov 27 2010 12:58:02 PM
Media Release
Panaji, Nov 27: Decks are now clear for the union ministry of commerce to denotify the three notified SEZ in Goa, said Shantaram Naik MP who has been vigorously pursuing the issue of denotification for the last
two years.
In a statement issued Naik expressed his happiness over the judgement pronounced by Panaji bench of Bombay high court declaring allotment of land to the SEZ developers in Goa as illegal.
Naik said in the talks that the three developers of notified SEZs had with the then union minister of commerce Kamal Nath about two years back, the developers had indicated to Nath in presence of Chief
MinisterDigamber Kamat, myself and South Goa M P Francisco Sardinha that they were willing to give up their SEZ proposals as they were convinced of the commerce minister's argument that they cannot go on
with the SEZ in Goa against the wishes of the people and the government. He alleged that the developers thereafter cunningly filed petitions in the court when in fact they were supposed to discuss the matter of compensation or some alternate smaller plot for non SEZ actvity as one of the developers sounded the minister about the same.
Naik said that, to the misfortune of Goa, union commerce ministry took a stand after their clear assurance to Goa delegation that the three SEZSs will be denotified after the minister accepted Naik's argument that as per law, authority which has power to notify has, an inherent power to denotify, although under Sez Act there was no specific power to denotify an SEZ, that the government took a stand that they would wait for the disposal of the pending petition.
Naik said that he argued with Anand Sharma who had taken over the commerce ministry that there was no order of injunction issued against the centre by the Panaji Bench restraining them from denotifying the
said three SEZs but Sharma did not appear to be in a mood to do anything while petitions were pending on the subject were pending in the court.
Naik further added that he would meet the commmerce minister Sharma on Monday and insist on issuing the notifications to denotify the three SEZs.
It may be recalled here that Goa requested the commerce minister to denotify the said three SEZs after an agitation started in Goa and the people of the state realized that SEZ developers are only interested
in land grabing without any assurance to give jobs to Goans. It was also discovered that the area of land that they sought was many times more than their actual requirement thus indicating that the developers
had a hidden plan to use most of the land for commercial purpose.