MARGAO: Town and Country Planning (TCP) Minister Vijai Sardesai has justified that the Town and Country Planning department’s NOC is mandatory to register sale deeds and has allayed fears that the same would result in skyrocketing of land prices. 

He further said that the government plans to release substantial land for settlement purpose.

Speaking to the media, he said, “The NOC from the TCP department was made mandatory to curb the malpractice of illegal sale of orchard land for settlement purpose. Unsuspecting people, who purchased the land for housing, were duped as they failed to realise that orchard land cannot be used for settlement purpose.”

“In Goa I think there is around one crore sq mts of orchard land which has been illegally developed into plots to be sold for the housing purpose,” he said and added that this was prevalent in Ponda, Sattari, Sanguem and Quepem the talukas.

“NOC from TCP is mandatory at the moment for registering sale of any plot in the planning area. All we have done is extended it to the village panchayats too,” he said and added that if this was done earlier, the Peddamol controversy would have been avoided.

He said the June 4, 2012 order freezing the Regional Plan 2021 created a problem and with this Goa has been left with no RP for five years due to which illegal development of orchard land commenced.

“From the time the Regional Plan 2021 was frozen whatever was common to the RP 2001 and 2021 was being permitted while all other areas were frozen,” he said and added that the government was in the process of changing this situation.

“We shall allow development in the areas marked as settlement in the 2021 Regional Plan provided these areas are not in the eco-sensitive zone,” he said and asserted that land to which there were objections for being shown in settlement zones will not be released for development.

“We are in the process of providing land to address the housing needs of the people and be rest assured that Goans will not suffer,” he said and added that the amendment to the Town and Country Planning Act will ultimately bring good to Goa.