-- Samir Umarye
BICHOLIM JULY 1: The Advalpal gram panchayat meeting today supported the mining activities in the village even as a violent mob restricted entry of the media persons in the gram sabha. Today's meeting was important as it was called specifically to discuss on the issue of mining and it's activities. It may be recalled that last month around 600 villagers of Advalpal including the local MLA, Rajesh Patnekar had marched on Advalpal mines paralyzing the mining operations for more than three days. The villagers especially women had later accused the deputy collector, Arvind Bugde for failing to take action against the mining companies and had resorted agitation near the deputy collector's office. Today as the mining issue was to come up for the Village panchayat meeting more than 150 villagers had gathered at the panchayat hall. The meeting started at about 11.00 am. The panchayat secretary read out the minutes of the previous meeting. A section of the villagers were enraged with the presence of the media persons including Samir Kolwalkar (HCN) and Samir Umarye (Herald). On seeing the media persons the mob became violent and sought the answer from the Sarpanch, Narayan Salgaonkar as to who has invited the media. There was a great commotion as the incident occurred just after the secretary read out the panchayat minutes. A section of villagers took the responsibility while the majority of them were against the media presence in the panchayat Hall. The villagers strongly demanded to discontinue the meeting if the media were allowed to remain present in the hall. The mob who was half in a drunk state also threatened to smash the camera of the news reporters. As some demanded media presence for the meeting the sarpanch told that there should be one third majority. The reporters sighting uproar over the issue preferred to backout. The meeting started after the retreat of the reporters and it was decided to support the mining activities in the area. The villagers also came down heavily on the Advalpal bachao samiti president, Shamsundar Gaonkar. They accused him of taking money from the mine owners and opposing the mining activities. About 140 villagers demanded that the mining companies should be allowed to continue their work in the area. All the panchas including deputy sarpanch, Ashwika Gawas, Sheetal Gadekar, Deelip Gadekar, Harishchandra Sawal were present for the meeting. Later in the evening the Bicholim Patrakar Sangh strongly criticised the move of the villagers calling it as a attack on the fourth estate. "We strongly condemn the behavior of the Advalpal villagers and seek apology from them as they cannot suppress the truth" the president of the Bicholim patrakar sangh, Ramnath Desai said adding "the incident would also be reported to the Goa Journalist Association."