Goa chief minister Pramod Sawant Friday announced the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Goa campus proposed to be set up at Melaulim, around 50 km from the state capital Panaji, will be built elsewhere amid protests against the move. Villagers have been protesting against the move for six months. They refused to provide land for the campus and put up a blockade at the village entrance to prevent surveyors from demarcating the land for the campus.
“We wanted the IIT project… so that the region is developed. We tried to explain it to the people. [Minister and local lawmaker Vishwajit] Rane also tried to explain. We had also invited the villagers for discussion, but they would not relent,” Sawant said. “This government listens to the people… [We] had no personal interest in going ahead with the project. It was purely in the interest of the state.”
Over a dozen policemen and villagers were injured in violent clashes in early January amid attempts to clear the blockade.
A representation signed by around half-a-dozen district panchayat members said if the people do not want the IIT campus, the government should build it elsewhere.
Rane, once a staunch proponent of the project, later wrote to Sawant saying he no longer wanted it there. He assured the villagers that as long as he is in politics and the representative of the area, he will not allow anyone to even put a single stone there.
Rane changed his stance after villagers from neighbouring areas backed the opposition to the building of the campus.
In May, the Goa government transferred around 10 lakh square metres of land in Melaulim for setting up of IIT-Goa, which has since 2014 been functioning from a temporary campus at the Goa Engineering College.
Two sites previously identified in Canacona and Sanguem for setting up the permanent campus were scrapped in face of protests from local residents.
The land identified for the campus has cashew trees that villagers claim has sustained them for generations.
