The Goa Industrial Development Corporation is making a brazen attempt to institutionalise the grab of plots, eating into areas earmarked as breathing space, in industrial areas. But the only thing that needs breathing space for the mandarins of the GIDC, is greed.
As we have reported in this edition, the GIDC has followed the template of this government. When the law is not the enabler, make new legislations which supersede the law, so that law breaking is masked in legislation.
For instance the existing Goa (Regulations of Land Development and Building Construction) Act 2008, does not allow conversion of open spaces into industrial plots. 15% of IDC areas is reserved for open spaces of which 7.5% is to be developed as recreational open spaces and the other 7.5% as general pool parking, open to sky and shall not be built upon.
The IDC Board, much like the Investment Promotion Board decided to literally over ride the Act to reduce the open space area to 10% and thereby utilise the balance for industrial plots.
While the argument will well be that this is being done to utilise more space within the Industrial areas, so that more land is not needed to be acquired or bought, this logic falls flat. The way to free up land is to take back unutilised plots, which are under the control of companies which have neither started their operations nor constructed on the plot. In many other cases, such land, instead of coming back to the IDC has been transferred, often at the behest and with the backing of GIDC’s board members. There are instances when senior GIDC members have had stakes and interests in companies to which plots are transferred, and this didn’t happen only during the Congress regime, when GIDC was headed by Babu Kavlekar. This is happening even now, under this BJP government.
Much to the chagrin of the Town and Country Planning Department, which is increasingly finding itself helpless, hapless and redundant, it’s clear view that open spaces cannot be utilized for plots but can be used for basic industrial purposes like setting up of garbage facilities, scrap yards, parking lots, is being scoffed at by the IDC.
This should hardly come as a surprise, though. The Investment Promotion Act allows the Investment Promotion Board to recommend any area as an “investment promotion” area even if it is in the middle of fields and then get the government to notify it. The TCP rules and the provisions of the Goa Regional Plan do not apply to such areas. Similarly the new bill to regularise illegal structures also ensures that the Goa’s land rules do not come in the way of the new legislation.
In each of the new moves made to either have new laws, or new Board decisions or notifications, the Regional Plan and the Town and Country Planning Act are seen as their biggest stumbling blocks for ‘development’.
For the common man and a true Goan, these Acts are meant to protect our land from rampant rape and take over. While during the Congress regime, the TCP department and those who could manipulate the Regional Plan, toyed with the existing law to take over large swathes of eco-sensitive land and convert them into concrete. But this government has mastered this art monstrously. It is making rules and laws to subvert these protective legislations. It’s like taking the chastity belt which prevents the abject surrender of Goa’s dignity, off. After all the manner in which land is being taken over and converted to concrete is nothing less than stripping Goa of all dignity.
The government doesn’t lose sleep over this. It takes a lot of rest to wake up fresh the next morning to draft yet another law for the builder or businessman, which will crush a law meant for the common Goan.
