PANJIM: The High Court of Bombay at Goa has directed 20 owners of the land, wherein hoardings have been erected in No Development Zone (NDZ), as well as the companies using them, to immediately stop displaying the advertisements by covering them with cloth.
Hearing a suo motu petition on illegal hoardings, the Court further directed the Electricity department executive engineer, division VI, Mapusa to disconnect the electricity connections of all these 20 hoardings.
The Division bench comprising Justices B P Deshpande and Valmiki SA Menezes has asked the owners/companies to approach the Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority (GCZMA) and to put up their specific defence or to file their objections within a week and the GCZMA will decide such objections, if any, on case-to-case basis and pass necessary orders within three weeks thereafter.
The Penha De Franca Village Panchayat is directed to monitor covering of the hoardings with cloth and not to allow displaying billboards/advertisements on all these 20 hoardings, till further orders. The village panchayat has also been asked to file an affidavit of compliance on or before the next date fixed on January 12, 2024.
As per the site inspection carried out by the GCZMA, all 20 hoardings fall within CRZ-III (River-NDZ) as per Coastal Zone Management Authority 2011 and all are displayed on the riverside land, within the jurisdiction of Penha De Franca village panchayat.
Advocate General Devidas Pangam told the Court that all these 20 hoardings are coming within 100 metres (NDZ) and that a decision has been taken by the GCZMA to remove them for violation of the CRZ Notification.
