Some things really don’t change even in the era of Parivartan. When the status of key emotive issues of the people of Goa like the introduction of a proper people centric Regional Plan, has been specially jettisoned, let us not hope for anything to come out of complete pretences like a serious approach towards creating pressure on the centre to give Goa a “special status”.
The announcement of forming an expert panel on special status is a complete hogwash. It is another exercise in the Chief Minister’s template of “cloud technology”. Here pending decisions are kept under a cloud of panels and committees which are either not formed or do not function.
Even as the very formation of a special panel to deliberate the road map of Goa’s special status, is a time wasting exercise, even its very formation can be doubted taking into account the Regional Plan experience where the CM’s announcement on the floor of the assembly has not been honoured. A House Committee was supposed to have been formed after the last assembly session which would start functioning from September 15, to study the vexed Regional Plan 2021 and deliberate ways to represent it after doing a customary peoples exercise.
Without meaning to be crude but forced to use language which is not genteel but effective, that announcement has turned out to be a load of “hot air”. The announcement of an expert panel on Special Status, belongs to the same category.
This announcement also comes at a time when judicial experts have debunked the Parrikar version of seeking Special Status. In a seminar on the desirability of Special Status in Goa, former Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court Ferdino Rebello has pointed out that under Schedule VII List 2 of the constitution, the power to protect land is exclusively with the state legislature.
Meanwhile former Law Commission Chairman and ex-Law Minister of India Ramakant Khalap, has strongly pointed out earlier in his reports and recommendations on Special Status that the Maharashtra Land Revenue Code has the provision to prohibit transfer of agricultural land to non-agriculturists. Mr Khalap has significantly pointed out that in the Goa and Revenue Code, this provision to prohibit transfer of land has been significantly omitted. Here Mr Khalap squarely blames one of Goa’s longest serving Chief Minister’s. This single provision may not in one stroke significantly settle the issue of land based Special status once and for all but it will, at the very least, be a beginning of a strong display of intent.
But this Government, like any other government which sees the sale of land as a huge revenue earning source, legally or otherwise, does not want to do it. The very reason why the Regional Plan has been kept on hold, is to allow adhoc conversions of land under a mask of legality. Even that mask has slipped because the Regional Plan was kept on hold and every NOC from the Town and Country Planning department was given on the basis of commonality between the out dated plan of 2001 and the flaw ridden RP 2021. This was an absolutely unheard of temporary arrangement which has become permanent. When the government can’t even take an honest approach towards protecting the land of its people through a Regional Plan which it mandated to provide, it has no right to claim that it is making a serious effort to give Goa a Special Status.
The manner in which this Goa government has handled the issue of Special Status, with the centre also gives no room for confidence. Just for once, if Mr Parrikar desisted from acting like a fan of the Prime Minister and behaved like the Chief Minister of Goa, he would have earned the confidence of people on the isuse of Special Status, even in the present circumstances.
He has met the Prime Minister several times in the past two weeks during the Maharashtra election campaign. If he had even once reminded him of his promise to the people of Goa during his first pre Lok Sabha election rally, earlier this year that the issue of Special Status was genuine, the people of Goa would have backed any effort in that direction, even the one of forming an expert panel. The Prime Minister had gone to the extent of saying that he was pleasantly surprised that the people of Goa did not want a financial package but just a status to protect their land and identity which was commendable. The Goa Chief Minister should have either made the Prime Minister deliver on his promise or shown enough zeal to act along the lines of what Justice Rebello outlined in the seminar on Friday and the stated position of people like Ramakant Khalap in his capacity as Law Commission chairman as well a serious student on issues such as these.
He has done neither, keeping Goa in the status quo of neither being special nor having a status.
