PANJIM: The State government is on a land conversion spree and has converted a massive 1.86 lakh square metres of Goa’s natural cover into settlement on the pretext of corrections much before notifying the guidelines to carry out alteration/modification in Regional Plan under Section 17 (2) of TCP Act.
The Town and Country Planning (TCP) Department has till date notified conversion of 1,86,791 square metres of green land across the State. Of the total 1,86,791 square metres, the TCP department has converted maximum 83,385 square metres of natural cover, 81,425 square metres of orchard land and 21,981 square metres of paddy fields.
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Since the first application made in March and till now, as many as 26 applications have been approved by the TCP Department in the garb of rectifying errors and correction of inconsistent/incoherent zoning proposals Rules 2023.
Similarly, maximum 64,000 square metres of land has been converted from orchard to settlement at Morjim village.
This is followed by Assagao village where nearly 63,000 square metres of land has been converted from natural cover to settlement and at Benaulim where 16,585 square metres of land has been converted from natural cover to settlement.
Meanwhile, the TCP Department last week notified guidelines for zone change in Regional Plan under Section 17(2) of TCP Act, 1974 that too with retrospective effect from March 27, 2023.
The guidelines “inadvertent error” in the Regional Plan mean and include errors like existing structures/past commitments which are not depicted in the Plan, land having less than 25 per cent slope shown as “no development slope”, wrong depiction of right of way of roads, non-feasible proposals for roads, depiction of internal roads and open spaces of plotted developments, error in depiction of CRZ boundaries, buffer zones, untenable identification of Garbage Management Site, Disaster Management Site, Micro Industrial Zone, the notification states.
A special expert committee has been constituted by the TCP Department for the purpose of scrutinising and deciding on the proposals based on the guidelines.
Meanwhile, the High Court of Bombay at Goa has issued notices on a fresh PIL writ petition filed by three environmental organisations including the Goa Foundation, the Khazan Society of Goa and the Goa Bachao Abhiyan (GBA), challenging Section 17 (2) of the TCP Act, 1974.
The PIL seeks an order to quash and set aside the newly added Section 17 (2) of the Goa Town and Country Planning Act, 1974 which seeks to allow ad-hoc and arbitrary conversions of privately owned plots in the Regional Plan, based simply on individual applications from such parties on the grounds of alleged errors that need to be corrected in the said plan. The petition challenges the Constitutional validity of such a provision, recently introduced into law. Immediately after the amendment was notified into law, several dubious zone changes have been notified with amazing speed, the petitioners stated.
