The Goa Coastal Zone Management Author ity’s (GCZMA) decision to clear 25 temporary cottag es and a shack at Agonda has been struck down by the National Green Tribu nal (NGT), which found the coastal regulator had effec tively ignored its own en vironmental safeguards to approve construction on a beach with zero additional carrying capacity. In a sharp indictment of the authority, the NGT’s Western Zone Bench, Pune, held that the GCZMA had violated its own Beach Car rying Capacity Report as well as an earlier decision restricting new structures along the Agonda beach.
The judgment by Justice Dinesh Kumar Singh and Expert Member Dr Sujit Kumar Bajpayee, quashed the GCZMA’s September 23, 2024 approval for 25 cottages and one shack proposed in Survey Nos 101/1 and 101/3 at Agon da, Canacona. The ruling exposes astriking contradiction in the functioning of the coastal authority. After accepting scientific findings that left no room for additional shacks at Agonda, the GCZ MA proceeded to approve another cluster of tempo rary structures without ex plaining why its own safe guards no longer applied.
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The NGT noted that the Beach Carrying Capacity and Sand Dune Mapping reports prepared by the National Cen tre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM) in Janu ary 2017 had assessed Agonda Beach as having zero addi tional carrying capacity for shacks. The report specifically recommended that no additional shacks, huts, tents or cot tages be considered, given Agonda’s status as a designated turtle-nesting site. The GCZMA had also, in February 2019, decided that no new applications for huts, shacks, tents or cottages on pri vate properties or hotels within 0-200 metres of the High Tide Line (HTL) would be accepted or processed until fi nalisation of the Coastal Zone Management Plan (CZMP).
Yet, five years later, the authority approved the Agonda proposal. What particularly troubled the Tribunal was not merely the approval but the absence of a convincing explanation for it. The 2024 decision, it noted, simply recorded that the authority had discussed the proposal and decided to ap prove it, without setting out specific reasons or explaining why the Beach Carrying Capacity findings it had itself ac cepted were being disregarded.
The Tribunal described the conduct in blunt terms: “It is a gross violation on the part of the GCZMA.” The appeal had been filed by Alchemist Asset Recon struction Company Ltd, sole trustee of Alchemist XVI & XXIX Trust, which also raised objections over alleged title disputes and claimed rights over the property as mortga gee. The NGT, however, declined to enter the title dispute, holding that it was unnecessary to decide that issue for dis posing of the appeal. It confined its ruling to the violation of the Beach Carrying Capacity requirements. The approval for the 25 cottages and one shack was ac cordingly quashed.
