Amusement park: Admn to consider villagers’ concerns

The Dangs district administration has,however,said that the concerns of the adivasi villagers of Navagam will be considered before the construction of an amusement park is taken up.

Dangs District Collector P K Solanki told The Indian Express: “We have given a positive report about the village and its residents to the state government following the proposal to construct an amusement park. We are still looking at other options,but there are just five to six families who might have to move out if such a thing happens.” Solanki is also the in-charge of the Notified Area Authority in Saputara.

In October 2010,a year after the plans for the amusement park were announced,the villagers filed a petition in the Gujarat High Court under the banner of Asil Manch,an adivasi lawyers’ collective.

Their petition said,refering to rehabilitation in the 1970s: “Alternative land along the Gujarat-Maharashtra border was chosen three kilometers east of the town where the families were moved out.”

They demanded that they be counted under the Saputara Notified Area Development Authority and their villages regularised and properly demarcated.

Most of their children study in the neighbouring schools and their livelihood depend on the tourists,the petition added.

As Saputara became a tourist hotspot,Navagam Mukam prospered and the residents increasingly gave up farming,taking up various jobs related to the tourism industry.

Villagers have said even the city survey maps obtained by them do not indicate Navagam,while one map completely blanks out the village and shows it as an open field: the reason that led to the proposition of an amusement park close to the village.

They said the Saputara Notified Authority has not conducted a single land survey until 2009,when it sent a notices asking them to pay the rent (maliki) to the City Survey Officer.

The City Survey Officer served the first notice to the villagers on October 6,2009 under Section 61 of the Land Revenue Code.

All the families paid the penalties and rent of Rs 25 per house charged for each year since 1970-71. A second notice by the City Survey Officer called for demolition of the illegally encroached lands by 2010 after which the villagers made representations to Chief Minister Narendra Modi and the state Human Rights Commission.

Arjun Pawar,an elderly villager said: “Our houses were built under the Indira and Sardar Awas Yojana. But when we went to the Governor in April 2010 we did not have our own panchayat and still our people have to vote in Malegav Gram Sabha,about 20 kilometres away. No surveys have been done by the government in the last 40 years,yet we got notices to pay maliki.”

Jhople Gaekwad,who was born in the village and represented the villagers in the HC in the absence of a Gram Sabha or a sarpanch,said: “The representations were made so that government officials understand that no surveys were carried out for 40 years,when 134 families moved out of Saputara town to Navagam.”

Villagers said that the upcoming amusement park will result in further eviction of 33 families in the BPL category. The project would have affected five-six families had it been undertaken in 1970-71. “The district administration is not aware of the population growth,” said Gaekwad.