This was the final ultimatum given to the State by the National Green Tribunal to have the plan ready by January 31, 2021. At the current point of time, Goa is not in any position to meet this deadline and will have no choice but to seek yet another extension of deadline from the tribunal. Whether such a request will be met kindly by the Tribunal that has already made clear its displeasure on the repeated delays will be known when the request is made and the reply received. Until then, Goa has little choice but to hope that the Tribunal gives it yet another chance.
The delay, as mentioned, was expected. In October last year, Herald had already posed the question of whether Goa would be in position to meet the deadline to complete the Coastal Zone Management Plan. At that time there were more than three months remaining to the cut-off date, now there are a little over three weeks and the progress since then has been zero. The process that was almost at a standstill at that time, with the State awaiting the draft CZMP from the National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM), remains at a status quo with the draft still awaited.
Exactly four months ago, on September 4, 2020 the State had written to NCSCM with the required data on the khazan lands to enable the agency to map these, as the shape files that the Chennai-based centre had earlier sent to the State did not contain the survey numbers and the mapping was not possible. This is where the CZMP drafting process stands and even after receiving the draft the further procedure is quite lengthy.
Once the plan is received in Goa, it will be submitted to the State government for approval and will then go before the Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority (GCZMA) for its nod. It is after this that a public hearing will be held, for which a 30-day notice period will be required. During this period the CZMP maps will have to be sent to all the local bodies – the panchayats and municipalities – for perusal by the people. Here comes a rather tricky part. Whatever suggestions and objections are raised at the public hearings will have to be considered by GCZMA before it makes its final recommendation to the National Coastal Zone Management Authority (NCZMA) for approval. Going by past experience it cannot be ruled out that a there could be plenty of these, especially since the villages have made their own plans and presented to the government for inclusion in the final State plan.
It doesn’t end there, but the plan will then undergo another review and be recommended to the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change, for the final notification. Even seeking a two-month extension may not enable Goa to meet a fresh deadline, as the entire process depends on when the State receives the plan from the Chennai agency.
The importance of the CZMP cannot be understated. Once notified, it will serve as the final plan for all decision taking on various aspects, especially for development projects in the CRZ areas. For that reason it cannot contain any errors and has to be completely factual, depicting the ground reality. There will be the tendency to hasten up the process to meet the deadline, but this should not result in errors creeping in, and so necessary care should be taken to avoid all slip-ups, though Goa has already slipped up in meeting the dates.
