PANJIM: Even as the State government is grumbling about scarcity of land for industrial development, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has exposed Goa Industrial Development Corporation’s (IDC) failure to act against 146 defaulting plot allottees that has blocked around 6.37 lakh sq mtrs of land, left unutilised or underutilised since 1989.
CAG in its report 2014-15 tabled on the Floor of the House during the Monsoon Session of the State Legislative Assembly revealed that IDC not only failed to repossess plots from defaulters but also failed to levy penalty of 30 percent of the plot premium as IDC Plot Regulation 2012 resulting in a loss of around Rs 20.36 crore.
“The performance audit had revealed absence of systematic planning, sound internal control mechanism and robust management reporting, which led to idling of vacant industrial plots, low revenue generation and non recovery of costs incurred by the corporation on behalf of the industrial units,” CAG noted.
The report pointed out that the Task Force Committee (TFC) constituted in August 2010 by the State government to identify underutilised and unutilised plots in various industrial estates reported 244 such plots belonging to 146 allottees involving 6.37 lakh sq mtrs of land that was left idle from four to 24 years as against a stipulated period of two years.
Of these, nearly 69 allottees with 2.05 lakh sq mtrs of area had not achieved the minimum utilisation of 30 percent of the plot area; however, no action has been initiated till date.
As per CAG, as on March 2015, IDC has repossessed plots of only 16 allottees and no action has been taken against the balance 130 defaulters.
The government had then constituted a ten-member screening and review committee for necessary action against the defaulters, who issued show cause notice to them. However, the dissolution of the committee in 2012 forced government to constitute a sub-committee to look into the matter. Interestingly, the committee; withdrew the show cause notices issued.
“We observed that the decision of the IDC to withdraw the show cause notices to defaulting allottees after 15 months of notice period, lacked any justification considering that all the defaulters had kept their land unutilised from four months to 24 months,” the report stated.
