Team Herald
MARGAO: The Aam Aadmi Party has said that the government at the Centre and the State were using the ‘puppet’ Goa coastal Zone Management Authority (GCZMA) to play fraud on the people by trying to bring out a Coastal Zone Management Plan (CZMP) using outdated base plans.
Stating that the CZMP was set to alter the very character of the State faster than anticipated, AAP called upon the govt to throw open the process that led to the appointment of the National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM) to draw the plan.
AAP convenor Elvis Gomes said that public pressure exposed the game plan leading to retreat and ‘temporary postponement’ of the hearing which, he said, was the only face-saving option for the govt.
He opined that the same plan with some cosmetic changes would find its way back as the local government would cave into the pressure from the Centre.
“The utterances by Nilesh Cabral regarding the CZMP raise a doubt as to who the real stakeholder is and for whom the CZMP is made. Moreover, NCSCM is an arm of the Central government which must have thought that the people of Goa are all fools to take this lying down,” he said.
adding that the appointment of the agency and the work assigned to them was kept under wraps all along like the nationalisation of rivers.
