SHWETA KAMAT
PANJIM: This is going to be extremely embarrassing for the Parsekar government. Deputy Chief Minister Francis D’ Souza’s basis for bringing back to life the Regional Plan 2021, without sending it back to the people as promised by former chief minister Manohar Parrikar, has proven to be totally false. Mr D’Souza had repeatedly asserted that since only 15 of Goa’s villages had objected to their village plans, the plan for the rest of the villages could be cleared. He then directed the TCP department to clear the way for bringing back the suspended plan back to life without going through the process of people’s participation.
Now, the TCP department, of which the Deputy Chief Minister is the Minister, in response to a series of questions asked by Franky Monteiro of the Village Groups of Goa, has nullified his claim and exposed that there was no shred of evidence or document to suggest that only 15 villages had raised an objection to their Regional Plan. More importantly, the TCP department has confirmed, in response to Franky Monteiro’s RTI application, 166 VPs have submitted inputs for corrections in the notified RP21. This in actual terms means that 166 objected to some or many sections of the their village plans and wanted corrections out of 181 village panchayats of Goa, which were sent the Draft Regional Plan 2021, which amounts to more than 91 % of Goa’s villages.
The Deputy Chief Minister’s false and misleading figure of 15 villages, purportedly meant that merely 8 % of villages objected to their village plans. Thus, Francis D’Souza is 83% off the mark and this hugely incorrect information was used to justify the decision to bring back the plan, which 91% of Goa’s villages objected to, alive.
What is shocking is that the TCP reports that it has no documents as evidence of any communication between the department and its minister informing the latter that there were only 15 villages, which had raised objections to their plans.
“No documents regarding discussion of Chief Town Planner with TCP minister and media is available in the records of the office, which purportedly claim that Chief Town Planner has said that only 15 villages are not satisfied with RP 21,” TCP Public Information Officer Vertika Dagur has said.
“Also no official document of this office is available in records of this office as per which this department or Chief Town Planner has claimed that 15 villages are not satisfied with RP21,” the reply added.
The RTI reply rubbishes the deputy chief minister’s claim that 15 VPs had objections and that RP 21 would be released in a phased manner with 174 VPs that have no objections or corrections in the first phase. The Deputy Chief Minister had later altered his statement and announced that the entire RP21 would be notified in “one go” by September 30, this year.
When Herald contacted Chief Town Planner Mr Puttaraju, he authenticated the facts in the RTI reply and admitted that 166 villages have submitted inputs for correction in the RP, apart from around 3000-odd individual inputs. “There are 15 VPs that have demanded scrapping of the plan altogether, it was just one line,” he said.
The Chief Town Planner struggled to try and not embarrass his minister, but had to admit this “There is a possibility that the issue of 15 VPs was misinterpreted or mis-communicated to the media. TCP never said that there are only 15 VPs that have objections,” he clarified.
Clearly the Deputy Chief Minister has a lot of explaining to do, because with this information out in the public domain, there is absolutely no basis for resurrecting a plan which 91% of Goa’s villages have objected to.
