PANJIM: Goenkars Against PDA (GAP) on Wednesday said that the procedures followed by Town and Country Planning (TCP) Department for the formations of GPPDA are faulty and bad in law.
GAP convener Arturo D’Souza said, “After perusing the TCP file, including the notings therein, in the process of formations of GPPDA it brings to light that the procedures followed by the TCP were faulty and bad in law. As such the TCP department went through the process of finalising the notifications constituting the GPPDA in undue haste and hurry only to satisfy the builders lobby.”
He added, “It has come to light that the Chief Minister had pointed out the procedural errors on 14/01/2018 in his noting in the file, after that it appears that the CM has not ratified the corrections made by TCP Department as signatures of the CM in the corrections do not appear. In one noting in the file it tells us that the TCP Board did not even meet for the 161st meeting and the items of that meeting were just circulated amongst the members of the Board.”
He further said that the full exercise of having separate Chief Town Planners for planning, for administration and for land use is to create confusion within the department and is not in the interest of the State.
“It has been seen that the TCP Board has been reduced to a unit of people just on paper as there have been no minutes of the board meetings to show on record that the board members have met to decide formation of PDAs. In one such remark, the chief minister corrected the remark ‘decided by the board’ to ‘recommended by the board’ has been seen when the file was forwarded to the CM for approval, as the formation of PDAs is the prerogative of the government and not the TCP Board,” he added.
GAP said it is apparent that TCP dept messed up the process of formation of the PDAs and a clear injustice has been meted to the inhabitants of the villagers as neither opinions nor suggestions have been sought while announcing the areas to be included in the GPPDA.
