Team Herald
PANJIM: The Goa Investment Promotions Bard’s honey deal with Vani Agro Farms for the production of alcohol and beer, marked as a red category industry by the Goa Pollution Control Board, sets new standards of how the state’s ecology and water needs are being subverted to push projects blessed by Chief Ministers and BJP MLAs.
The twin projects of the beer plant and alcohol have been cleared in the village of Amdai in Sanguem on the banks of the Uguem river which is the source of the Quinamol lift irrigation scheme. The manner in which it was cleared, the way the Investment Promotion Board first allowed conversion of land which was zoned partly orchard, partly settlement in 2001and partly orchard and partly settlement in 2021, and the drawing of water when the ecosystem where six litres of water is required to make just one litre of beer, have all been a subject of Herald’s sustained investigations. Every document which is needed to corroborate the facts we put out is with Herald and there’s more. We want the Investment Promotion Board and the government of Goa to justify how this project could be cleared once we put out the facts in our series of stories starting with this one.
While Herald first exposed how this project has been initiated and passed, we have more details of how the state machinery and local bodies have got together to fast track this beer and alcohol project. The Pollution Control Board in its consent to establish had clearly stated (order copy with Herald) as “Brewery Unit”. “Large scale enterprise”, “Red Category”.
Under Section 3 of the Goa Investment Promotion Bill only Industry Classified under the Orange Category as per the Goa State Pollution Control Board guidelines or Expansion of any Red Category Industry as classified under the Goa State Pollution Control Board guidelines, referred to the Board by the Government, can be cleared.
While clearing the project under Item number 6 in its meeting dated 16/01/15 and subsequently on 10/10/15 where it approved the conversion of land from orchard to Industrial zone, it relied on the all approvals acquired by the company including one from the GSPCB, where the minutes of the IPB clearing the proposal stated, “The Board has also noted that the GSPCB has granted consent to establish for the said proposal”. The minutes very cleverly ignored that the category of the project was marked as red by the GSPCB and therefore, the IPB under section 3 of its own act could not have cleared it.
The IPB has clearly gone out of its way to surrender and convert much more land than this project should have allowed it to do. Look at these lines from the minutes of the IPB board meeting where they gave a point blank clearance for converting the entire area allotted for the project instead of the limited area needed for construction the manufacturing capacity. Stating that “there is a potential for future expansion”, the IPB decided “to recommend to the state government to demarcate and notify, the entire survey numbers, as notified area for the purpose of investment promotion under this Act”. Thus in the case of Vani Agro, the entire project area, 1,24,439 square metres, of partly orchard, partly settlement and partly orchard, was notified as was Investment promotion area.
This is just the tip of the Vani Agro sweet deal but it’s the most glaring example of the extent to which this board can go, under a draconian act to take away precious land for an alcohol project. But it has gone even further. It has cleared a project which even the provisions of its own draconian act could not clear.
(To be continued)
