MONDAY, JUNE 17, 2024
In India, the 73rd and the 74th Constitutional amendment, enacted on June 1, 1993, extends constitutional status to municipalities, village panchayat bodies – empowering people and locally elected representatives the power to act in common interest and have a say in how their communities should develop. Participatory processes have been hailed as a robust method in the planning process.
However, of late, the development plans for cities and villages across India are dogged by one criticism: they keep people, the real beneficiaries, out of the planning process. And this is exactly where Goa is heading towards.
Recently in Goa, close to 45 civil society groups came together to oppose the unprecedented changes and amendments to the town planning laws. TCP Minister Vishwajit Rane declared “there will be no Regional Plan (RP) in the State of Goa henceforth because Regional Plan 2021 (RP 2021) was the biggest scam on the people of Goa”.
The RP 2021 has been remained controversial since the time it was finalised- for keeping the people out of the planning process and for incorporating inaccurate data and information.
The RP even turned out to be an important issue in 2012 Assembly elections with then Manohar Parrikar-led saffron party assuring to scrap or denotify the plan, which was ultimately kept in abeyance and revived in 2018 in a phased manner, only to allow zonal changes, which is going on even today.
The RP 2021 was prepared by a 11-member State Level Committee, which included globally renowned architect, Padma Vibhushan Charles Correia and former India Chief Town Planner, Edgar Ribeiro.
According to the Minister, RP 2021 has been a “huge scam perpetrated by the Committee members for their self-benefit.”
The RP as per law is a policy document that lays out the contours of development in the State over a 10-year period and correspondingly demarcates different zones — agricultural, settlement, industrial, no development zones, orchards, and eco-sensitive, among other divisions.
Goa’s first RP (2001) was approved in 1986, and promoted ‘high-end’ tourism, giving many concessions to big hoteliers with relaxed construction norms.
The second RP (2011) was released in 2006 and made large-scale conversions of green zones to settlement zones. However, following public outcry, the plan was denotified in 2007 and the State went back to adopt the 2001 plan. The process to draft RP 2021 began thereafter.
As mandated under the TCP Act, experts feel that the RP updated from time to time with participatory process, in keeping with the requirement of the state, is the need of the hour.
Former Chief Planner, Town and Country Planning Organisation, Government of India, Edgar Ribeiro had once made a clear statement that the consultants should not be involved in preparing ODP and RP because they are project driven.
He had even emphasised on the need to update the RP, at least till 2031, as we are already into 2023 and 2021 plan has no relevance.
Goa Foundation director Claude Alvares believes that RP is becoming an obstacle in the way of random conversions of land for real estate purposes.
“As of now, if we go through the TCP Act, the statement made by the Minister is completely illegal. Whole TCP Act itself is based on RP. First step of planning itself is having RP in place and after that you can do whatever you want. Without RP, there is no TCP Act. They are finding that RP is creating a lot of obstacles for random conversion of land, meant for real estate purposes. All the properties in North Goa are sold to people from Delhi. No properties are left,” he said.
Alvares said that in order to do away with the RP, the government will have to scrap the entire TCP Act, which is a “complete stupidity”.
“The Section 9 of the Act speaks about the preparation of RP Act. It clearly says once the RP is prepared, nothing can be done in Goa that is contrary to the land use cited in the RP. This is a law at present… let the minister say anything…let him scrap the Act to do whatever he wants…this will expose the government’s malafide intentions,” he said.
The activist pointed out that between 2018 and 2023, several amendments have been made to the TCP Act, all of which have served to dilute its provisions and introduce discretionary powers to officials and planning boards.
“Just take the example of Section 17(2). It has given total powers to the Minister and Chief Town Planner to undertake rampant illegal conversion in the name of corrections and rectification in the RP 2021,” he said adding, “TCP Act has been weakened so much that it has no standing now in any form. And further removal of Section 9 that deals with RP, will make the Act just a mere document.”
Goa Bachao Abhiyan (GBA), which spearheaded the agitation against RP 2021, is clear that unless the RP is upgraded with a clear planning vision for next 10 or 20 years, planning has no relevance in the State.
“First of all, we are ours a democratic country and we follow the Constitution. The Constitution speaks about the 73rd and 74th amendments, which give powers to public and the local bodies,” GBA Convenor Sabina Martins said.
“The TCP Act talks about preparing a RP for every 10-year period. So if the minister has been sworn-in by the Constitution, then he has to abide by it and RP has to be prepared through participatory process. The Act itself says and they cannot bypass the law,” she said.
“This is not a monarchy where one person decides the planning of the State. We the people of Goa will
decide what is good for us,” Martins
asserted.
Martins opined, “If the minister does not have strength to make RP, then he should hand over the TCP department to the person who has strength to go to people, get their inputs and draft the RP.”
Martins said that the process to draft new RP should have been in place by now.
“It is very important to upgrade the RP. In the last 10 years, new laws have come into force, there are climate change issues, sustainable development goals are being adopted...all these are needed to be incorporated while planning for the next 10 or 20 years,” she explained.
Urban planner and former member of SLC that drafted RP 2021, architect Dean D’Cruz said that the Minister's statement to do away with the Regional Plan process goes against the basic TCP Act.
“RP is an absolute necessity and then we can have zonal plans based on RP. The planning boundaries need to be set by RP. The Act is very clear and there cannot be any dilution,” he said.
D’Cruz said that the government made every effort to dilute what is there in the RP 2021 and for this purpose, amendment after amendments were introduced to the TCP act.
“First they tried through 16B and now 17 (2). Basically the changes are being made to suit the builders’ lobby and the speculators,” he said.
The TCP Act was amended in 2018 to add Section 16B (Section 16B of the Goa Town and Country Planning Act and proviso to Regulation 6.1.1 (d) of the Goa Land Development and Building Construction Regulations, 2010) that seek to allow ad-hoc and arbitrary conversions of privately-owned plots in the RP based on individual applications from such zone changes.
It became a huge source of controversy with NGOs and political opponents terming it a scam. The amendments were challenged in the Bombay High Court at Goa.
Under this, nearly 7,000 applications received in-principle approvals for zone changes, while 250 got final approvals.
In March this year, the government notified an amendment to the TCP Act by insertion of new Section 17 (2), paving the way for the Chief Town Planner (CTP) to alter or modify zones and attributes in a regional plan. It allows the CTP to correct “inadvertent errors” in a notified regional plan.
Under this, so far, TCP has allowed zone changes from natural cover or paddy fields to settlement in 20 cases. The matter is also challenged in the Court.
“They are destroying the eco-sensitive zones of Goa, the zones that play an important role and help us cope with climate stresses,” Martins said. The TCP department, which refused to comment on the Minister's statement on RP, defended the move to amend the Act for zonal changes. “There were several errors in the plan and we are just making the necessary corrections. The corrections are done only in genuine cases as per law and after getting government approval,” CTP Rajesh Naik said.
In a recent article for O HERALDO, Adv Cleofato Almeida Coutinho said that for the past three decades there has been a huge pressure on Goa’s limited land resources, not in keeping with the natural growth of population, but fuelled by market speculation.
“The opaque process of land conversions and change in land use, with huge kickbacks, has brought Goa to what it is. There is no trust in the administration. How long Goa’s civil society shall battle against the rapacious Town and Country Planning Department?” he had stated.
Adv Coutinho said that precious judicial time is being wasted due to unreasonable and arbitrary provisions brought into the process of change of land use giving complete discretionary and arbitrary powers.
“One sultan attempted to turn this green State into a pink city via the RP 2011. After about one decade, another ‘prince’ wishes to do away with the RP itself,” he remarked.
