PANJIM: This has the potential to become the biggest who-done-it in recent times. The Goa (Abolition of Proprietorships, titles and Grants of Lands) bill, 2014 has the Attorney General Atmaram Deshpande saying that he has cleared the bill, which Law Department sources say they have not drafted.
This has raised questions about who actually drafted the bill that looks like a cut paste job from the Goa, Daman & Diu Abolition of Proprietorship of Lands in Diu Act, 1971.
However, this bill goes beyond just what the Diu bill and says that all rights, and titles including any interest of every proprietor, title-holder, owner, grantee, given by the Portuguese Government when they ruled Goa within the State will be “abolished, extinguished and permanently cancelled.” Except for Alvaro grants. (Herald looks at this issue in detail on Page 8)
This bill is supposed to be about evacuee lands. But it goes beyond it as it addresses the evacuee land issue separately and adds on to that by including a majority of lands within its ambit.
According to the bill the ownership of that land will be with the government and it will give this to anybody it sees fit after giving the original landowner a house to live in.
The bill also seeks to appropriate any uncultivated land; basically trying to underline that land ownership is not with the proprietors as we now know but with the government.
Now that the acquisition route is not so easy or cheap with the new Land Acquisition Act, this could be easy way.
Meanwhile, the Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar on Saturday said, the bill will be sent to the newly appointed Goa Governor Margaret Alva within three days.
The Bill, which was passed in the Goa Legislative Assembly in March, was referred back to the government by previous Governor B V Wanchoo for clarifications.
“It is not rejected. He had referred to me with queries which have been already replied. Don’t mix things up. Sending it back to me is not the same as referring it back to the Assembly… Since he received some representations in this regard, he had asked us to respond. We have done it and we will be sending them back to the Governor (Alva),” Parrikar said on the sidelines of the oath ceremony of Alva.
The chief minister added that clarifications were required on some clauses in the Bill, which are basically on the usage of terminology or words in it that could give a different meaning or are ambiguous.
