By Mário Cabral e Sá
No end to KR ‘woes’ ran the headlines, when the controversy on KR hinterland and coastal alignments was going on and Eduardo Faleiro, then junior minister and MP, campaigned for the so-called hinterland alignment.
He was the media adviser to KRC. Faleiro threw propriety to the winds and set up the office of the campaigners of the hinterland alignment in his own office.
The only points on which all parties were in agreement were on the entry and exit points. That, depending on which way you were moving, was Karwar and Pernem. A road engineer was foisted as an expert and then prime minister, Narasimha Rao was fooled into believing that not only would the minorities be happy, but there would also be a saving of several crore rupees. As a result, Narasimha Rao ordered all work stopped and appointed Justice Oza to arbitrate on the matter. E Sreedaran, then CMD KRC, had predicted: go for hinterland alignment and there will be landslides every few kilometres. Sreedaran, who was later the chief of the Delhi metro, was not as universally admired as he is now. Meanwhile B Rajaram, then GM Goa sector and a brilliant engineer, designed an anti-collision device which worked very well, and a netting system to avoid boulders from falling off the loose mud into which they were implanted. On that he was not very successful.
Sreedaran’s joke was that Lord Parashurama had made Goa in a hurry and therefore it was subject to landslides such as the one that right now is flooding the tracks for days and as a result trains have been cancelled leaving passengers stranded at midpoints like Margao.
The then Archbishop of Goa, Monsignor Raul Gonsalves, opposed the coastal alignment tooth and nail. As a result, the controversy took a communal colour. Sreedaran had every bishopric, whatever their denomination, visited and sounded for their views "that may be Brother Raul’s personal view, but it was not the view of the church". In fact, every bishop wanted the railway. The Konkan was a poor area and they wanted it developed. The Bishop of Pune ceded Church land at Pinguli absolutely free. It was, they said, unanimously an economic problem not a religious one.
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It is yet in the planning stage, but is excellent news. The prospect is that Goa could well be an international arbitration court. All going well, so plans Verappa Moily, the Union Minister for law and justice.
Our own courts may be clogged with cases. An estimate has it that it may well take a century or more to clear the backlog by which time more cases will come up. I lost count of the number of adjournments at the High Court level in the SEZ cases. Mr Digambar Kamat told me that he is quite ready to go to the Supreme Court, no matter the expenses and the delays.
But the paperless court planned by Moily will hopefully be different. Goa will be an international arbitration centre to make it the foremost destination of arbitration cases in India, Veerappa Moily said on Sunday after the regional meeting on implementation of the 13th finance commission recommendations and other measures for judicial reforms. "Goa will have one district court, which will be a paperless court. Therefore, we want to set up real centres of international arbitration and Goa will become an important destination for international arbitration."
To ensure quick disposal of cases there will be special morning and evening courts but cases will be disposed off in three years. The state governments and the respective judicial authorities will work out on their own litigation policy for reducing delays. But all cases with investment exceeding a certain sum will be tried in the commercial courts.
The idea is well worth a try by the people of Goa.
