Team Herald
PANJIM: Two separate challenges to the Tiracol golf course project will be heard in the High Court and the National Green Tribunal on July 20 and July 24 respectively. While the High Court will hear the prayer for stay of the entire project on the ground of tenancy laws being grossly violated for the sale of land to Leading Hotels, the NGT will hear the application for stay on environment grounds.
Petitioner Goa Foundation has challenged the CRZ clearance to the project. This will come up on July 24. This was decided in two separate hearings in the Goa bench of the Bombay High Court today.
What is significant is that the project proponents moved the High Court against the NGT interim order of maintaining status quo and not undertaking any tree felling in the project property. While the court asked the case to be heard in Goa and not Bombay, where it was initially moved, the Bombay High Court did offer relief to the project proponents by quashing the NGT interim order but allowing the petitioners to challenge in the NGT the basic prayer of a stay of the project on environmental grounds.
It also dismissed the Leading Hotels contention that the maintainability of Goa Foundations petition (for a stay on environment grounds) had to be heard first, before a stay could be given. Thus on July 24, the NGT in Pune will hear the issue of grant of stay on the ground the CRZ permissions for the project were incorrect.
With regard to the original writ petition challenging the project because of violations in the Tenancy Act, the High Court had on July 6 ordered that Leading Hotels “shall not cut the fruit bearing trees in the subject properties” and the company was to place on record the activities that were being carried out by the hotel. The court had also admitted a fresh petition against the golf course and resort.
With the next hearing slated for July 20, Leading Hotels has been asked to submit a copy of a plan disclosing the position of the property in question 48 hours before the hearing. Meanwhile, the court in its order said, “The interim orders passed earlier shall continue till then.”
This effectively puts a stay on any tree cutting at the location. The St Anthony’s Mundkar and Tenant Association that had filed the initial petition in 2014 has asked for a stay on the entire project.
The association has claimed that the developers changed agricultural land into non-agricultural with permissions from the Town and Country Planning (TCP) pointing in the same direction.
The entire project that measures 9.5 lakh square metres has drawn criticism from many villagers for taking into consideration the various tenants that continue to cultivate cashew plantations.
