Discontent brews over new airport for Goa

Protests over a new international airport for Goa have been growing with villagers, threatened with displacement, forming an umbrella organisation to agitate over the issue after the new government announced its approval for the greenfield project at Mopa, North Goa.

The Mopa Vimantall Piditt Xetkari Samiti said villagers in Mopa and neighbouring areas in Pernem taluka were “totally opposed” to the project. The villagers said “the decision that Goa would have two airports was taken by the government in 1995, without any studies”.

Samiti’s secretary Sandip Kambli said: “We know that the only reason that the government is pushing this ill-conceived and disastrous project is because a number of rich and powerful people, including relatives and friends of elected representatives, have bought our lands at cheap rates. These purchases have been made with the objective to speculate on these lands, using the airport project to drive the prices of these lands up. In a decade, the prices of lands around the airport have gone from Rs 50 per metre to over Rs 3,000.”