Kamal Ghorui
Margao: Nearly two years after chief minister Pramod Sawant announced in his 2023-24 budget speech that Chandor would be developed as a heritage village, the proposal remains stuck in bureaucratic and legal tangles, with the official notification to declare Chandor a heritage village yet to receive govt approval.Official documents accessed by TOI paint a picture of a proposal caught in a web of red tape—from a failed tender process and the Lok Sabha election code of conduct to a fundamental legal question raised by the law department over whether the archaeology department even has the statutory power to issue such a notification.The department of archaeology moved a proposal in Oct 2023 to appoint a consultant for preparation of a master plan for Chandor’s development as a heritage village.A request for proposal was floated in Feb 2024, but the tender could not be opened on the scheduled date of March 20, 2024, as the model code of conduct for the Lok Sabha polls kicked in on March 16. When the bids were eventually opened in July 2024 after the code was lifted, the only two bidders were found to be ineligible.The department’s preliminary scrutiny concluded that neither bidder had experience in policy drafting or preparation of heritage rules and regulations for central or state govts, which was a basic eligibility criterion. The RFP was subsequently cancelled in Nov 2024.The department then shifted strategy, proposing to directly notify Chandor as a heritage village—bypassing the consultant route—and submitted a draft notification to the law department for legal vetting. The law department, however, sent back pointed queries in Jan 2025, asking the archaeology department to clarify under which statute the proposed notification was being issued and whether the department was empowered at all to issue such a notification.Significantly, the archaeology department, in a file noting dated April 25, 2025, conceded that the proposed notification was “non-statutory” in nature and that the department had “no such powers to issue such notification under any legislation”. The noting clarified that the exercise is “purely administrative in nature” as it flows from the chief minister’s budget assurance, and submitted a revised draft notification seeking fresh administrative approval from govt.As of the last noting in the file dated May 19, 2025, the notification for declaring Chandor a heritage village was placed before the director of archaeology for signature. But nearly a year has passed since, with no official declaration having seen the light of day, suggesting that a proposal born of a budget promise in 2023 remains, nearly two years on, a promise unfulfilled.
