While the TCP minster Vijai Sardesai’s candid observation that the Regional Plan 2021 will not be “ready” by December 2017 deserves points for honesty, it further endorses, painfully that a plan which was merely kept in abeyance, while the Governor said it would be de-notified, is in an absolute comatose state.
While Sardesai cannot be accountable for the delay of the Regional Plan, he among all others should be the first to agree that the ambiguous condition of the Regional Plan has allowed conversion specialists from converting land rampantly, into settlements. This is a major hit not only to our land, but has resulted in a major change in the skyline and topography. And isn’t the prevention of this one of the tenets of Goenkarponn?
Sardesai was in the forefront of this agitation, and has been agitated over the manner in which RP-2021 has been kept on the backburner, In 2014, referring to the irregularities in Canacona (a taluka whose plans are due to be notified shortly), he said, “There are serious irregularities in land conversion. The BJP government is regularly putting the Regional Plan in cold storage with a view to facilitating large contracts of land in the state.”
As the TCP minister, he has the opportunity to put it out of the cold storage. Admittedly this isn’t going to be easy, because notwithstanding the massive delay, this is not merely about bringing to life the RP-21 but bringing in key legislations in the TCP Act which recognises the tenets of participatory planning as envisaged in the 73rd and 74th Amendment.
As Herald had stated in its editorial of December 24, 2015, the “TCP Act has no provision for participatory planning by local rural bodies. This Act was formulated in 1974 while the 73rd and 74th Amendment which gave constitutional status to panchayats was enacted only in 1991. This resulted in the Goa Panchayati Raj of 1994. Here, one must add that the past Congress governments are as much to blame as the present BJP government. If the TCP Act of 1974 was amended in 1994 when the Goa Panchayati Raj came into effect, then sending the Regional Plan to the villages for a final vetting would have been be a legal and not merely a political or people demanded necessity. The amended Act would have made it mandatory for the TCP to involve the panchayats at every step in the Regional Plan formulation and enactment”.
The CSJP, a very important arm of the Church, had then called for the urgent and immediate amendment of the archaic Town and Country Planning Act of 1974, pointing out in its communiqué that “the recent move to open the RP-2021 for public suggestions appears to be more of an excuse to accommodate land use changes by appearing to give the impression that the planning is participatory, transparent and accountable”.
If the TCP Minister’s desire and honest intention is to look at the vexed issue of planning holistically and even consider amending the TCP act itself, and initiate a true and transparent process of participatory planning, then there will no need of protests, “or people objecting to everything”. And it will give some meaning to the Regional Plan process. If that is indeed the case, the Minister’s need to take some more time is justified. At the same time, he too knows that the current situation is being mis-used rampantly to convert large tracts of land. His own statement quoted earlier is testimony to his feelings. And therefore there cannot be too much time taken either.
Meanwhile, there is this issue of the government wanting to de-notify this plan together and start afresh. On March 20, 2012, the Goa Assembly voted to pass the then Goa Governor Mr Kateekal Sankarnarayanan’s inaugural address to the Assembly, where he said that the current Regional Plan would be ‘de-notified’.
On July 24, 2014, Fatorda MLA Vijai Sardesai reminded then Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, on the floor of the House, of the Governor’s address and promise of de-notification and the Assembly’s endorsement of this through voting, of the same. Mr Parrikar’s reply was, “I have not denied it”.
The fate of the Regional Plan now lies in both their hands, as CM and TCP Minister. Will they de-notify or take the still notified plan out of its coma and revive it, or start with a clean slate altogether. Whatever they do, time is not an endless luxury they have.
