TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: July 29. Exactly two months ago, Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar had said that he would constitute a House committee on Regional Plan 2021 and functioning of Town and Country Planning soon after the Goa Assembly monsoon session ended August 21. Till September 29, no such committee has been formed to sort out the issue. His other promise was that this House Committee would start functioning from September 15. That was fourteen days ago, and the committee has not even been constituted. In fact there is not even a whiff of it.
Moreover, in another twist, sources at the Secretariat claim that the government cannot have a House Committee on the issue as the matter should be tackled at the government level itself.
“The Government will have to form a State level or departmental committee. It cannot have a House committee on the matter,” bureaucrats maintained.
In a discussion in the Assembly on July 29 on the vexed Regional Plan, the Chief Minister had said that five to six legislators would be appointed on the committee based on whose views, the process of land plan for the State would be initiated.
During the discussion, cutting across party lines, MLAs attacked the government over its failure to finalize the Regional Plan 2021 which has been lying in cold storage. Fatorda MLA Vijai Sardesai had said, “Twenty-eight months have passed since giving the deadlines for bringing in land plan. The Chief Minister always sets August as a deadline for taking any decision pertaining to the Regional Plan. He (CM) is very fond of the month of August,” he said pointing to the announcement of Chief Minister to look into the Regional Plan issue in August.
BJP’s own MLAs also attacked the government on the issue. Curchorem MLA Nilesh Cabral said, “A large number of permissions are being granted illegally by local bodies based on the RP-21 and RP-2001, which is used as a reference plan by the Town and Country Planning Department”.
Outside the House, experts closely involved in preparing the draft Regional Plan 2021, by far the most effective and people friendly draft, was brutally tampered in the final notified version. Like Architect Dean D Cruz said, “I think this is a scam. There are a lot of illegalities happening and the plan needs to go back to the villages for corrections”. He called this step taken by the chief minister a gambit to “buy time.” D’Cruz was a member of the Task Force on the Regional Plan 2021.
Such voices will continue to be raised, if even assurances given on the floor of the Assembly are not even touched, two months later and after deadlines announced have expired.
