Glenn Costa
PANJIM: The Parsekar government appears adamant on pushing the flawed Regional Plan 2021, kept on hold by the Parrikar government, in three phases. Deputy Chief Minister Francis D’Souza has cherry picked 15 village panchayats, which he believes had no objections to their village plans and release plans for those villages, completely against public sentiment.
The other releases will be after due process culminating in the plan being released just before the assembly election. According to the TCP Minister Francis D’Souza, the process is likely to begin by May and he promised that local MLAs would be consulted on the issue.
Sources, however, said that all will be done after the process of – at least perfunctorily – going through the objections submitted to the Town and Country department.
“The file is with the government. They are looking into it. Movement is happening. Once it is cleared from there we will start from our side,” Chief Town Planner S T Putturaju said, adding that the department is geared to finalise and complete the process. He defended the present arrangement saying that all major illegalities have been kept under control.
This has been disputed by GBA, which led the Regional Plan agitation as well as the formation of the new plan.
“It looks like their (present government’s) fight was for the benefits that the previous government was getting. They are doing the same thing that they were objecting to,” GBA convenor Sabina Martins said, arguing that for the past three years the government has done ‘nothing’.
“They are giving permission for five star hotels in the coastal belt by filling low-lying areas. These are basically for building houses in the fields. These small constructions have become big bungalows.
The government is not acting against illegalities. Look at the mangroves in Panjim, they are refusing to act,” she said.
Though the Deputy Chief Minister has said that the process to release the Regional Plan would begin shortly and he was in favour of beginning it as soon as possible.
Insiders, however, argue that this will not happen and what will happen is that the main plan will be cleared just before the elections so as to not give the opposition time to attack the government. Though the elections are slated to take place in March 2017, political analysts say that they could happen in October – November 2016.
