Church body wants to debate Town & Country Planning Bill
HERALD REPORTER
PANJIM, AUG 4
Responding to the ‘Goa Town and Country Planning (Amendment) Bill, 2010, which was tabled on the floor of the Goa Legislative Assembly, Council for Social Justice and Peace has put forth its recommendations to launch a debate before its mandate.
“There have been allegations that the activists do not know anything and only oppose…we therefore placed suggestions to the Act and propose it to be debated first and then mandated,” CSJP chief Fr Maverick Fernandes said at a press briefing today.
In a list of nine recommendations to the government appointed committee, CSJP has asked for a debate on public platform through various forums that will assist the government to hasten the report for an acceptable Development Planning Act.
CSJP alleged that the State though constituted a committee to propose the new amended TCP Act, it did not set a time frame. At the same time, Fr Fernandes said it was disturbing that the government in the on-going Assembly Session tabled an Amendment to the current Act despite constituting a committee for its comprehensive review and amendments.
“…For plan making, Districts are to be declared Planning Areas and Settlements are to be declared as Local Planning Areas. More importantly each district and their settlements would be their own Planning and Development Authority and plan formulation would be in outline form at start and final form after the suggestions/objections process…” one of the recommendations stated.
The Church has also suggested that the entire stress be on mapped information and proposals be freely available to the public for transparency. Besides, it urged for a supplementary function to the district planning committees to process District Development Plan under the Act for greater coordination, apart from other recommendations.
Meanwhile, the proposed bill sought an Amendment to section 17-A of the Goa, Daman and Diu TCP Act 1974 to the give the state authority to notify the competent authority, in addition to the Chief Town Planner …, secondly frame Rules and Regulations in this regard and define clearly ‘low lying land’ to remedy ambiguity as judged by the present low rate convictions under section 33 of the Land Revenue Code.
The press release issued, meanwhile alleged that TCP in particular ‘has proved to be ethically violative’ of Section 17A of the TCP Act 1974.
