The One That Almost Got Away
How an illegal hotel built on sand dunes nearly escaped High Court demolition orders, reveals CLAUDE ALVARES
Our panchayats and their leaders have now become part of an all-Goa scenario of complete non-governance accompanied by acts of brazen manipulation and corruption. Nothing illustrates this better than the ‘Case of the Illegal Resort’ in Colva, put up by Snowkon Gonsalves, a former Sarpanch. The attempt to hoodwink both the authorities and the High Court was even more blatant.
That the High Court finally caught up with it is another matter. By its order dated 10 August 2010, the High Court has directed the Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority (GCZMA) to remain present when the illegal resort is demolished. This time the High Court, as a matter of abundant caution, has demanded that a compliance report be placed before it after the demolition is complete.
In March this year, the Colva Consumer and Civic Forum got in touch with the Goa Foundation with a strange request. The Forum informed the Foundation that the GCZMA had granted approval for regularisation of a resort of nine rooms plus wall and well, which had been ordered demolished by a High Court order of 2 March 2000! Not only were the buildings, wall and well regularised, the Town Planning and Panchayat authorities had also granted approvals for the same set of buildings in 2009. The matter appeared worth investigating.
Piedade Gonsalves, mother of Snowkon Gonsalves, had been directed to demolish an illegal building (constructed on sand dunes in the 200 metre no-development zone in 1993-94) after the High Court had heard two writ petitions. The first, filed by Felix Serrao, a person directly affected by the construction, sought the Court’s directions to the Sarpanch of Colva Panchayat to carry out orders for demolition issued to it by the Goa State Committee on Coastal Environment (GSCCE). The GSCCE had, upon inquiry, declared the constructions illegal and in violation of Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) rules.
The second petition was filed by Piedade Gonsalves herself. In her petition, she sought a stay on the demolition order issued by the Panchayat, and directions for regularisation of the impugned constructions. She claimed they were legal and beyond 200 metres of the high tide line (HTL).
The High Court found against her and, on 2 March 2000, ordered the Panchayat to take necessary action against the construction. The Court also directed that Felix Serrao’s legal costs be reimbursed by Piedade Gonsalves.
Ms Gonsalves appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court heard the appeal and dismissed it on 11 March 2004.
In normal course, that would have been the end of the matter. The Panchayat would have to start the process of demolition and obey the High Court’s directions without any further ado. However, in October 2003, six months before the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal, Snowkon Gonsalves – son of Piedade Gonsalves – became the Sarpanch of Colva. He would remain Sarpanch till January 2007 and Administrator till May 2007.
The first step was to get the Felix Serrao’s widow to write a letter to the Panchayat, in 2006, that the buildings on the affected survey number were, in fact, demolished and she therefore had no further grievance in the matter.
The second step was to change the original survey number on which the offending building stood. The original survey number on which the building stood was 54/4. A new record was created, with assistance from someone within the Directorate of Settlement and Land Records (DSLR), to establish a new survey number, now called 54/4-A. Apparently, this is one of the easiest things to achieve nowadays. With one fell stroke, Gonsalves could now show, if and when called upon to do so, that the buildings in Survey No: 54/4 had been demolished. The regularisation permission granted by the Town Planning and the GCZMA in 2009 was, on paper, for completely different structures, in Survey No.54/4-A. Mysteriously, they were also for a building, a well and a wall!
The Colva Civic Forum produced a survey plan officially issued in 1998 by the Land Survey Department. It showed the illegal construction as legal and existing. However, the same department issued another survey plan of the same plot in July 2010, which showed the same plot completely bereft of any construction. Neither did the plan issued in 2010 show any sub-division.
When the Colva Civic Forum asked for a copy of the mutation proceedings that created the new sub-division of 54/4-A under the RTI Act, it was told that the “file could not be traced”.
When the Goa Foundation wrote to the GCZMA in December 2009, enclosing the High Court and Supreme Court orders, the GCZMA with alacrity withdrew its approval and issued a show cause notice. However, it took no further action against the construction, forcing the Goa Foundation to move the Court with a fresh petition in March 2010.
The Court did the best possible thing in the circumstances. It asked the Court’s Registry to produce the original writ petitions filed by Ferrao and Gonsalves. It then asked the GCZMA to identify the structure, well and wall from the photographs enclosed in those petitions and to demarcate these and the plot as per those petitions. It refused to go into whether the impugned constructions were indeed on another survey number. It sufficed if the construction to be removed was the same as the one that was before the High Court in 2000, when it ordered the demolition.
Note the time-lag for justice in this case. The constructions were put up in 1994. Notices to the Panchayat to demolish were issued by the government in 1994-1995. The Panchayat did not demolish anything. The Court ordered resumption of the demolition process in 2000. The Supreme Court confirmed this in 2004. But still, the High Court was compelled to re-order demolition in 2010, one full decade after its original order was passed. In the meanwhile, for 15 years, the owner enjoyed the benefit of the illegal construction built in violation of CRZ, after destroying sand dunes. Mr Gonsalves was even elected as Sarpanch of Colva!
If this is the quality of governance available in our Panchayats, God knows which gutter Goa is descending into. Our Chief Minister claims we are as developed as Singapore. Try destroying a sane dune, putting up an illegal construction or even throwing a piece of paper on a road in Singapore. Try behaving with the High Court and the Supreme Court the way in this manner for over 10 years in any other part of the world, particularly the US or the United Kingdom. The latter sent bestselling author and Member of Parliament Jeffrey Archer to jail for five years, only because he told lies in Court!
This is the ‘Case of the one that nearly got away’ but for the timely action of the Colva Civic Forum. Goa needs such civic groups and their heroic work now more than ever. We cannot remain in a permanent state of wrongdoing by officialdom. Only people power will right this situation. Courts are always ready to help, but they cannot do much without the assistance of smart and alert groups like the Forum. This case is a clear demonstration.
(The full text of the High Court order dated 10 August 2010 can be downloaded from the High Court’s website under Writ Petition No: 236/2010 under Farad orders.)
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Balloons for my Simmering Soul
By Smitha Bhandare Kamat
We love to live in a world of illusions. We blow fancy balloons of various sizes and shapes to satiate our self-esteem. In fact these same balloons keep us afloat in this nutty, bloodthirsty ruthless world. But, unfortunately, an intentional or accidental stab can propel us on the hard ground, and force us to stare at reality in the face. Speaking for myself, I have plenty of impressive balloons blown to match my inflated ego. I could name them with fancy superlatives- a ‘doting’ daughter, an ‘agreeable’ wife, an ‘excellent’ teacher and a very good mother, or at least I think this is the fact, until the time circumstances prove otherwise.
Playing the role of a doting daughter implies visiting my aging mother who is facing the ‘empty nest’ syndrome, once in a blue moon. It also entails, making three calls per week, on an average. The calls are more to give vent, declare and proclaim the stress I’m undergoing, while juggling the various roles of being an ‘empowered, contemporary’ woman. I often end up blabbering, rather than making time for my mother and giving and really listening to her calamities about her sick pet or that her mango tree was barren this year. Such conversation brings to fore, that time indeed has shifted our priorities in life. But I still want to believe she is the same strong lady that she once was, that the equation has not changed.
That she still is the lady of the house and takes the decisions and that I’ve not grown up, given the option I never want to. I want to lean emotionally on her frail shoulders, rather than offer her mine. And so, this beautiful balloon of a doting and caring daughter glides softly, eternally, perpetually.
Oh, being a perfect wife is again a tale that begins and ends with cleaning up the mess for the umpteenth time in the house, feeding the toddler and trying to figure out the homework that my elder child has scribbled on his calendar. In the maze of these happenings, I still emit the right responses to my spouse’s declarations of the day, and place overcooked or more often undercooked meals under his nose. But these are religiously, complemented with a million dollar smile. He could not have bargained for a better wife, could he? This red, heart shaped balloon floats with occasional hiccups but it floats a little higher catching the sheen of the rising sun.
Being a venerable lecturer is, yapping at 100 odd young faces cramped in the class, and walking out with a sane mind and saner attitude. Normally, drowned in the sea of paper assessments, projects, attendance compilation, etc., it is a miracle that I can squeeze time to relieve on an average, at least two aggrieved souls per week of their emotional, spiritual, materialistic, academic or what- have- you- ‘nothing at all’ problems. They sure add furrows on the forehead, but they compensate it with immeasurable smiles on the lips. This is a one frisky rainbow balloon that swoops away with a melody of its own.
Well, as far as being the perfect mother is concerned, I do take this task a little too seriously, I lose count of days and nights of sleep and rest, as I attend to their every whim and fancy. At the end of it all, I hear the brother-sister duo of barely four years and eight years them conspire, and claim- ‘Oh she must be the wicked step-mother, we got to tell Papa to get our real mummy back home? Nothing can be more disastrous as the biggest, fattest and the most gorgeous balloon bursts and falls flat on my simmering soul.
