The wait is finally over for 600 families of Sanguem who carried the weight of giving up their homes, their fields, their village temples, so that South Goa could have drinking water. This week, that promise was finally honoured!

With the Goa Government’s commitment to Antyodaya, Sarvodaya and Gramodaya, Chief Minister Dr. Pramod Sawant resolved the 40-year-old land rights issue tied to the Selaulim Dam project, with Sanads (official land title documents), now being issued to eligible families.

600 families waited for four decades to receive what was truly theirs. 

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These are the people form Sanguem, families who lost their land and their places of worship when they were resettled 14 km from their original habitat to make way for the dam. 

It was a sacrifice made by these families so that an entire district could have drinking water, and one that has taken 40 years to be formally recognised.

Why the Selaulim Dam Matters

It’s easy to forget just how much of South Goa runs on the water this dam holds. Built between 1976 and 2000 on the Guleli River, a tributary of the Zuari, Selaulim Dam stands about 42.7 metres tall and stretches over a kilometre in length, with a reservoir capable of holding roughly 227 million cubic metres of live storage across a 24 sq km surface area. 

Beyond irrigating thousands of hectares of farmland in Sanguem taluka, it supplies drinking water to major towns including Margao and Vasco, and even reaches North Goa through the Opa Water Works, meaning a large share of the state’s population has, for years, depended on water from a village that gave up everything for it.

As per the reports from The Goan, Minister for the Department of Drinking Water, Subhash Phal Dessai, said, “The people of Sanguem didn’t just lose land, they made possible the tap water that reaches homes across two districts”.

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Land rights for project-displaced families is one of those issues that rarely makes headlines until it’s resolved, even though it shapes lives for generations. 

For the families of Selaulim, the Sanads mean more than paperwork: they mean legal security over the ground they’ve called home for over four decades, and a formal acknowledgment of what their community gave up for the rest of Goa.