PANJIM: The High Court of Bombay at Goa on Thursday declined to grant interim stay to the Goa State Shack Policy 2023-26 notified by the State government while admitting the petition filed by five shack operators challenging the shack distribution criteria based on years of experience.
However, the court has made it clear that the allotment of shacks will be subject to its final orders.
Five shack operators Shital Parab and Kritika Fadte, both from Vasco, Austin D’Costa of Aldona, Kapil Mulgaonkar of Pernem and Sanjay Chari of Candolim had filed a writ petition praying for removal of the experience criteria and to allot shack licences by drawing lots from the eligible applicants without discriminating on the basis of experience in the field of erecting shacks in the previous years. The petitioners had prayed for interim stay to the Shack Policy till the court gave its order on their petition.
Arguing on behalf of the petitioners, Adv Rohit Bras De Sa prayed for interim relief to restrain the State govt from shortlisting any of the applicants by classifying them based on their experience and to hold a draw of lots of all applicants without adverting to requirements of any experience or without categorising any of the applicants based on the experience. He said there should be one class of applicants irrespective of whether or not they had any experience in running the shack business. Also the draw of lots be drawn from out of the one category/class.
Adv De Sa submitted that Clause 9 of Shack Policy 2023-26 was arbitrary because such classification was based upon no intelligible differentia. He relied on an interim order dated October 18, 2019 wherein the HC had directed that 90 per cent of the shacks available should be allotted by lots from out of the applicants having three or more years of experience and balance 10 per cent to those having experience of less than three years. He pointed out that the circumstances in 2019 petition were somewhat similar to the circumstances in the present case.
The Court at the prima facie stage declined to remove experience criteria stating that the policy has made categorisation based on some experience. Thus categorisation in the policy has been the subject matter of several decisions of the Court which will have to be considered at the stage of final hearing.
The division bench comprising Justices Mahesh Sonak and B P Deshpande found that the classification in the Shack Policy 2019-22 was somewhat problematic. It stated that with the introduction of two separate categories some tweaking of the last policy categorisation was inevitable. The HC clarified that the allotments made in the impugned policy will be subject to further orders of the petition and this fact be made clear to all the allottees in their allotment orders so that these allottees do not claim any equities.
Draw of lots for selecting shacks, location postponed to Nov 7
MARGAO: The draw of lots for selection of shack applicants and location has been postponed to November 7. Earlier, the draw was scheduled on November 3.
The State Tourism Department had recently invited applications under the Goa State Shack Policy for erection of temporary seasonal structures, beach shacks, deck beds and umbrellas, for tourist seasons 2023-26. Total number of shacks to be allotted are 359 shacks- 254 in North Goa and 105 in South Goa. Of the 359 shacks, 34 (approx. 10%) are to be allocated to applicants with experience of one to four years and another 34 are to be allocated to applicants without experience. Remaining 291 shacks will be allotted to experienced shack operators with experience of five years and above.
