Orders restricting the collection of other people were imposed on Tuesday in a proposal by IIT Goa in Sanguem taluka following a protest by local farmers who opposed the acquisition of land for the project.
South Goa District Collector Jyoti Kumari issued orders to enforce section 144 of the 1973 Code of Criminal Procedure.
The orders prohibited the gathering of five or more people within two hundred meters of the demarcation in the Panchayat of the village of Cotarli with the aim of interrupting or delaying the investigation and demarcation procedure of the proposed IITArray.
On Monday, some local farmers had allowed allocation barriers to be demarcated, saying they would allow their fertile land to be acquired for an Indian Institute of Technology campus.
Police had filed a complaint against a farmers’ organization for allegedly preventing government officials from carrying out their duties.
“As soon as the government announced the status quo of the IIT-Goa in Sanguem, some farmers and villagers from the town of Sanguem came together and formed an organization and agitation opposed to the implementation of the IIT allocation in the village of Cotarli, noting that they would be disadvantaged from their agricultural lands and the herbary flora and fauna of the village would be destroyed,” said the collector’s order on Tuesday.
According to the superintendent of police (South Goa), Minister and PARLIAMENTARIAN Subhash Phal Dessai had trusted the farmers that they would be duly compensated, the collectors’ order noted.
However, riot teams incited citizens “by uploading unjustified messages on social media and holding meetings on street corners” and “inciting citizens to seek justice and opposing the government’s plan,” he said.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Goa Prime Minister Pramod Sawant said the land on which the IIT is proposed belongs to the government and the administration wants no one to be subjected to injustice as a result of the project.
Farmers demonstrated on Monday after a tax team went to Sanguem to demarcate the land.
“We grow rice here. We don’t need an IIT,” one farmer told police.