In a very interesting observation on the opening day of the Monsoon Session of the Goa Assembly, the Opposition pointed out that the state government has appointed 1,423 committees of which nearly half precisely 774 have not met. Interestingly the Goa government is forming committees at an average of one a day to study various issues raised on different platforms! Not to mention there must be a host of other Government Bodies, Commissioner offices and cells. While there are 196 statutory committees required, of the 222 Government notified committees, 32 committees have never met!
This makes for some interesting observations and it would be interesting to see what these Committees have achieved and what percentage of the Goa Budget has been utilized to pay for the expenses of these Committees. No wonder there has been a lot of consternation about these Committees and Commissions being appointed which have no value-added but are nothing but con-schemes to either give the Common man the run-around by making it seem that they are being given a patient hearing or just another means to siphon off the tax-payers monies. There clearly is no accountability and no one seems to care! Even Chief Minister Digambar Kamat was not aware of how many committees were chaired by him when asked by the Opposition Leader Manohar Parrikar who had to point out to him that Kamat was the Chairman of 25 committees whereas the chief secretary heads about 16 committees. A glaring example is the seven member committee appointed by the government in 2008 which met just thrice during last three years to discuss the issue on the Mormugao Port Trust’s expansion plans while the MPT has already embarked on its expansion plan including making Goa the “rest and recreation playground” to cater to the libido of the US Armed Forces and exporting Goa’s mineral ore to countries that are openly operating against India. The MPT doesn’t care a damn about objections raised that the expansion would affect the demography and the ecology of Goa. Another Committee with a huge Budget to do a study on the Famous Sea Link between Vasco-Da-Gama and Dona Paula is milking it rich in the meantime. The recently appointed TCP Committee is yet another attempt to fool the people when there is a need to rectify the glaring errors within the outdated 1974 TCP Act which the Goa Government doesn't want to rectify!