SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 2024
Team Herald
PANJIM: The High Court of Bombay at Goa is hearing a writ petition filed by four Parra villagers challenging the declaration of Parra village as a Planning Area under the Town and Country Planning Act.
The petition also seeks to set aside the preparation and notification of the Outline Development Plan for Parra. Petitioners Claude Alvares, Casmiro Da Cunha, Agnelo Alphonso and Genevieve Saldanha e Fernandes are the members of Parra village gram sabha with the State of Goa, Village Panchayat of Parra, North Goa Planning and Development Authority (NGPDA), Town and Country Planning Board and Director of Panchayats made the respondents.
The Division Bench of the High Court, on Wednesday issued a notice to the concerned, returnable on December 21 when the matter will be next heard.
The petitioners have pleaded they participated in several gram sabha meetings held to discuss the village land use and development plan including the notified Regional Plan 2021 and they are filing this petition to enforce their Constitutional rights to plan their own development which have been recently trampled upon by the inclusion of their village in the planning area of the NGPDA.
“Neither the panchayat nor the gram sabha of the village has been consulted about this takeover of the planning powers of the panchayat assigned to it under the Constitution of India. The NGPDA has now embarked on formulating the Outline Development Plan for the village, after publishing the Land Use Register and Map. These actions are contrary to the demands of the 73rd Constitutional amendment and against the law and spirit of the various provisions laid down in the Goa Panchayat Act, 1994 (hereinafter, ‘GPR Act’),” it said.
