Gov notified it as slum, but Code of Communidade empowers Administrator to demolish
TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
MARGAO: Even as the Administrator of Communidades, South Zone, has completed its exercise of serving demolition notices on the residents of Moti Dongor and adjoining Talsanzor, many an eyebrow is being raised in legal circles over the government’s silence on the notifications notifying Moti Dongor as a slum and the decision to invoke the Goa Land (Prohibition on Construction) Act, 1995, to raze down the structures.
Questions are being raised whether the Administrator of Communidades can demolish all structures on Moti Dongor, including structures existing prior to the coming into force of the Goa Land (Prohibition on Construction) Act in 1995.
Constitutional lawyer Adv Cleofato Coutinho wondered how the authorities could raze down structures atop Moti Dongor under the Goa Land (Prohibition on Construction) Act, 1995, when the Act came into force in 1995.
When this query was posed to the District Collector, South N D Agrawal, he said the notice of removal also speaks of action against the structures on other enabling provision of the law of the land. He, however, could not state why the Administrator of Communidades did not invoke the provisions of the law of the land in the removal notice.
What’s interesting to note is that the Collector said that the Code of Communidade empowers the Administrator to raze down illegal constructions on Communidade land, but had no answer when asked why the authorities did not invoke the provisions of the Code to initiate action against the structures.
Adv Coutinho also demanded to know how the authorities could go ahead with the demolition when there’s a government notification declaring Moti Dongor a slum. “The notification might have been issued with the intention to provide basic necessities such as water and power, but still the government’s intention was to develop the area as a slum,” he added.
Interestingly, the question whether Moti Dongor was a notified slum or not was not tested in the High Court while hearing the Public Interest Litigation filed by Mumbai-based lawyer, Adv Sanjiv Punalyekar, since the government filed an undertaking that all illegal structures will be identified and razed down.
