Surat: Villagers from the villages added to the newly formed Vapi Municipal Corporation (VMC) held a public meeting at Chandor village on Wednesday, to protest the amalgamation of their villages with Vapi city. Eleven villages have been added to the municipal limits of Vapi. Gradually, some of these villagers are joining hands to protest.
The major issues being protested are the increase in taxes, collection of taxes on services that were not taxed earlier, the haphazard procedure adopted to close gram panchayat offices and the exclusion of the adjoining notified area of the municipal corporation while villages that were farther away have been included.
Some 2,000 people from such villages joined the protest and say they will submit a memorandum to the govt asking it to remove these villages from the municipal limits. The gathering was addressed by leaders from the villages and Vansda Congress MLA Anant Patel.
“The gram panchayats were given just 24 hours to give their consent in a letter. Why was there such a hurry and such an authoritarian method of doing this? The officers did not even care to discuss it with villagers,” said Jagan Patel, a social worker from Chandor.
Patel added, “Over 80% of the population of these villages are tribal people. They do not have regular sources of income and will not be able to pay the higher taxes. Further, if the small pieces of land of their homes or farms are claimed for development projects, they will end up on the road.”
One of the grouses of the villagers is the exclusion of the notified area. “The notified area adjacent to the city has not been included in the municipal corporation, but Morai village 12km away has been included. In Morai, 90% of the villagers are tribal people, and their consent has not been taken,” said MLA Anant Patel.
“According to PESA (Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act), it is mandatory for a tribal village to hold a gram sabha and clear a resolution related to any major decision such as this merging into a municipal corporation. Here, no gram sabha was held, and in some villages police did not allow the holding of a gram sabha,” Anant Patel said.
The villagers fear their property tax will increase tenfold and they will have to pay water charges as well, which was not collected from them earlier.