Finally, it was left to the villagers of Sancoale, Verna and Keri to approach the Goa Bench of the Mumbai High Court through three separate writ petitions that challenge the allotment of land to the developers of the Special Economic Zones (SEZs), which were supposed to come up in Goa. The petitions say that the SEZs were allotted land by the Goa Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) in gross violation of the law. Though the Digambar Kamat government has repeatedly averred that it does not want any SEZs to be set up in the state, the administration has repeatedly dragged its feet in the matter, not taking any concrete action whatsoever. After the government issued a stop work order to the SEZs on the occasion of New Year's Day 2008, nothing further was done for over six months, until matters came to a head when the SEZ developers moved the High Court and the Union Commerce Ministry told the state it could not notify SEZs that were already notified. Then the Chief Minister took a second momentous decision, to cancel the allotment of land to the SEZs. But the GIDC order merely said this decision was in pursuance of the government's policy, studiously avoiding any mention of irregularities. After that, once more, nothing... The facts of the case are there for all to see. Some of the SEZ developers actually applied for allotment of land before the state formulated its SEZ policy. The allotments were done in a tearing hurry, often at GIDC board meetings that were not properly convened, and therefore illegal. Every conceivable procedure was flouted, obviously at the instance of some big politicians in the state. The land was given (gifted?) away at ridiculously low prices. In the case of the Rahejas IT-ITES SEZ at Verna, it was actually given at a price lower than the revised rate for the Verna Industrial Area fixed by a previous meeting of the GIDC board. Two of the notified SEZs sought massive tracts of land