A person no less than the Town and Country Planning Minister has said that all land conversions that have come into effect due to clearances made by the Investment Promotion Board will be a part of the Regional Plan. This is nothing short of the murder of the Regional Plan allowed by the Town and Country Planning Minister who has no option but to allow the surrender of his department to the all Powerful Investment Promotion Board.
In the Banana Republic of Goa, under the guise of bringing in investment, departments meant to safeguard Goa’s precious land and regulate its land use are made to salute one board controlled by a lobby of business mandarins, close to the government. The Investment Promotion Act allows the Town and Country Planning and the land use Act to be superseded if a project gets cleared by the Investment Promotion Board. The same Act has an interesting anomally where under a different section project proponents have to go to the secretaries of departments to get individual clearances. However the presence of this section and its implementation has been shrouded in vagueness because the rules governing the Act have not been framed.
The entire exercise is geared towards converting orchards and agricultural land which otherwise would not have been cleared under the Regional Plan, irrespective of the manipulation which has gone into it. The Town and Country Planning department is concerned that overdoing conversions recklessly will be challenged and in some cases it is simply not possible. That is when IPB comes in.
In its last meeting in January the IPB had cleared conversions of 23,500 square meters of land. In the last meeting it did not reject but merely put on hold three major hotel/hospitality projects, cleared on agricultural, khazan, orchard land and paddy fields, in a total area of 1.96 lakhs square meters
This includes
-100-room luxury hotel at Varca, in which 14,000 square meters of land was converted of which 12,000 square meters are paddy fields. 5000 square meters of the total project area was marked as settlement in the Regional Plan
– A 120 room five-star hotel and convention center on 10,000 square meters of agricultural land
– A hotel project in Reis Magos where the zoning of about 48,000 square meters has been kept on hold
– A “mini India park project in Cavelosim of 9.16 lakh square meters of which only 1.25 lakh square mts is orchard land while the rest is paddy fields or khazan land
We ask why are these projects necessary, how much of local employment will they bring, what is the employment they will generate for locals and if so, what are the commitments extracted from the developers and most importantly, how much of Goa’s water will these projects draw, especially in South Goa where water tables are shrinking and many projects are being cleared over land used for water recharging?
This is unbridled and open loot of our land and resources with nothing in return. And new Acts are being drawn up to supersede those that are meant to protect our lands.
While the four projects discussed in the last meeting have been merely put on hold, there is little to suggest that the IPB will block them. In the name of investment and development, the benefits of both are accruing to a select section with no trickle-down effect coming to the people of Goa. The Regional Plan has been well and truly murdered.
