PANJIM: A division bench of the Bombay High Court at Goa comprising Justice M S Karnik and Justice Valmiki Menezes, presently hearing public interest litigation (PIL) writ petition challenging Section 17 (2) of the Town and Country Planning (TCP) Act, 1974, issued notice on a fresh Goa Foundation PIL challenging the vires and rules of Section 39A of the same Act.
The matter is posted for interim relief on October 3, 2024.
New section 39A of the Goa TCP Act, which came into force on February 22, 2024, seeks to allow once again entirely ad-hoc and arbitrary conversions of privately owned plots in the Regional Plan and notified Outline Development Plans (ODPs) based on individual applications from such parties (“spot zoning”).
The Rules under the Act for section 39A came into force on March 7, 2024. Such provisions are contrary to the very scheme of the TCP Act, and are also violative of Article 14 and Article 21 of the Constitution of India. Both Section 39A and the Rules have been challenged by the NGO.
The new feature of Section 39A -- when compared to 16B and 17(2) – is that government has now given itself the powers to interfere openly in the permissions for plots lying within planning areas governed by the ODPs.
Thus, the government is now given itself the power to change land use not only in the Regional Plan but also in notified planning areas, which now includes every nook and corner of the State.
This can only bore ill for the future of the State, since every planned area is now subject to arbitrary influence, especially from interested parties including real estate bodies and developers, the petitioner stated.
In the meanwhile, more than 6,000 applications for changes in the Regional Plan under section 16B (introduced into law by then TCP Minister Vijai Sardesai) had become infructuous, since 16B itself had been removed from the TCP Act due to the PIL challenging it in the High Court. The cancellation of 16B was notified on the same day that section 39A was brought into force.
The new PIL has recorded that 95 per cent of the applications under section 39A which have appeared in the gazette for public objections involve changes from orchard (2,37,710 sq mt) and natural cover zones (1,42,462 sq mt) to settlement. The gazette notifications are bare, giving no details of the name of the applicant, area to be changed, existing zone and proposed zone. Only the survey number of the village is indicated. The entire exercise is to conceal, not to disclose. These actions of government are not transparent and against public interest, according to the petitioner.