issues of constant power fluctuations, touts operating openly, haphazard parking, mushrooming illegal constructions dominates gram sabha of Calangute

The meeting was delayed for nearly half an hour due to lack of quorum but inspite of a nearly half an hour delay, the gram Sabha commenced with a sizable number of people.
A villager Cotilda Braganza questioned the Sarpanch shawn martins as to why the meeting was postponed to Sunday when it was supposed to be held on 14th cotlida sarpanch said that as there was some religious function on the 14th the gram sabha had to be postponed to some other day.

In urbanisation issue Premanand divkar asked for what reply vp sent to government and what reply came from Government and why is that Sarpanch had not take special gram Sabha on urbanisation, and same was announced in the gram sabha and the villagers said that they are opposing it and also told the sarpanch to denotify it.

The clerk from the panchayat read out the minutes of the previous meeting. And also read out the budget estimate for several works to be undertaken for the current financial year.  With regards to the budget allocation a villager Premanand Divkar pointed out some discrepancies in the budget allocation . With regards to the urbanisation a villager and former sarpanch Joseph sequeira blamed the panchayat for giving NOC to the builders illegal projects which resulted in the village becoming a concrete Jungle. Villagers supported for the fomer sarpanch and said that constant power fluctuations were a result of the mushrooming of illegal  constructions.

Villager Premanad divkar said requested the sarpanch to hold a meeting with the power minister inorder to resolve this issue . supporting Premanand the villagers said that constant power fluctuations were happening because the electricity was diverted to mega projects as a result of which the villagers were suffering as their electrical  appliances were getting damaged and demanded with sarpanch to have a meeting with the power minister sarpanch assured the villagers that the panchayat will write to the power minister to have a meeting with the villagers. With regards to commercial tax divkar accused the sarpanch of not accessing the hotels in the area which were supposed to pay the commercial tax

The gram sabha which was going on smoothly suddenly erupted with a group of youth getting into heated arguments with sarpanch over the issue of touts and massage parlours operating in the village bringing a bad name to the village the youth demanded that these massage parlours and Spas had become dens for prostitution bringing a bad name to the village  the youth demanded to know the action taken by the panchayat on the massage parlours sarpanch martins said that they will issue a notice to massage parlours operating and said that incase they were found doing prostitution they would seal the premises. Sarpanch aslo said that they have made letters to the chief minister and the SP to take action against the touts. The youth also read out the names of a number of massage parlours that were offering massage to the villagers and had become dens for prostitution. Sarpanch assured to take action. Another issue raised was about house tax.

The locals again grilled the sarpanch as to whether migrants staying in houses were paying house tax or not.

Some of the local taxi drivers also raised the issue of parking fees which were collected from certain areas which were not pay parking areas, sarpanch assured to look into the matter and told the taxi drivers to give the names of the parking inspector who had charged them parking fees. Even though the gram sabha witnessed heated discussions there was no untoward incidents reported.