PANAJI: The Corporation of the City of Panaji (CCP) served notices to 457 tenants of the city’s municipal market who allegedly defaulted on their shop rent payments. The civic body instructed these tenants to submit their rent receipts and trade licences to validate their leasehold licensee status for their respective shops.
According to the directive issued by CCP commissioner Clen Madeira, failure to comply with these instructions within seven days will result in eviction proceedings under the Goa Public Premises (Eviction of Unauthorised Occupants) Act, 1988.
A senior CCP official said that notices were issued to occupants of shops in municipal market phases I and II in 2003 and 2007, respectively, whose names appear in the Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation’s records, as the CCP lacks documentation of market tenants.
The official said that the municipal market tenants continued to cause a loss of revenue running into crores to the corporation. He said that in 2023 the CCP decided to sign a leave and licence agreement with the tenants; however, they refused and instead showed their interest in signing the lease agreement.
The official said that the CCP continued to utilise public funds for the upkeep of the market complex while receiving no rental income or fees from the occupants.
“This situation persists due to the lack of a formal agreement between the corporation and the tenants,” he said.
CCP’s market committee chairperson, Bento Lorena, said, “The notices must have been served to the market tenants by the commissioner only after taking legal opinion. CCP has not received any rent from tenants since 2003. Tenants find reasons to not sign an agreement with CCP.”
The Panaji Municipal Market Tenant Association said that the market tenants were ready to sign the lease agreement and claimed that the CCP agreed. “When they agreed to sign the lease agreement, then what was the need to serve notice? We have been conducting business in Panaji for generations. You cannot evict us. We will take legal opinion and decide what needs to be done,” one of the tenants said.
Former mayor Surendra Furtado welcomed the CCP’s decision to initiate action against market tenants. “It was during my tenure as the mayor that we appointed N D Agrawal to probe into the illegal occupation of shops, where he said that 90 per cent of shops are illegal. Whenever we tried to take any action, tenants would run to the local MLA. I hope the action is not derailed again just because market tenants run to MLA,” he said.
Furtado said that the CCP ought to recover the rent from all defaulters because they benefited by running the business there. A senior CCP official said that a section of market tenants wrote to the CCP seeking time to reply to the notice.
