Late in the evening, it’s rare but the South Goa Planning and Development authority is in a hurry to finalise the ODP as it’s the last day of the deadline set by the government to finalise its version of the draft ODP after the SGPDA committee has heard all objections and taken decisions of changes accordingly.
Led by Ashok Kumar, the member secretary of the SGPDA the subcommittee to look into finalising the draft plan and listening to people’s objections included Margao Comunidade President Savio Correia, co-opted member Dilip Prabhudessai who’s a noted architect and husband of Margao Municipal Council chairperson Babita Prabhudessai and Dilip Sopstheswarkar.
The subcommittee between November 08 and November 30 heard a total of 575 objections for the Margao ODP and Ponda ODP with the exercise being of 12 days in Margao.
“There’s a lot to keep in mind while hearing these objections. Mostly people want more FAR for construction, they want their zone to be changed to commercial, and some want conversion of their orchard land and some want roads to be realigned to prevent loss of their land, all needs to be locked from an open mind and from what the city wants,” explains Savio.
Savio Correia explained that the committee decided to not convert any paddy fields and low-lying land, keep orchard land intact, rejected any conversion to commercial zone around hospitals and schools, the committee identified private forests and took a stand to preserve them while certain land conversions and realignment of roads was considered. Savio explained that’s it’s a mind boggling and tedious procedure.
“Even if people didn’t turn up, we went ahead and did the nectary and scrutinised those objections and studied them, such was the work of our committee asserted Savio.
While Dilip Sopstheswarkar explained that the focus of a such a subcommittee is not to just look at individual grievances, individual objections or individual suggestions but what needs to be considered is what is best for Margao city for another 20 years and keeping that in mind the committee heard all objections while the experience to plan a city demands a lot of qualities and experience and the committee members brought their best out to plan Margao.
While Dilip Prabhudessai lauded the committee for its work, he had some reservations on the functioning of the subcommittee.
“We did a tremendous job in listening to objections and maybe a good job on deciding the outcome on each objection. I feel we need to draft all these changes we’ve made or all these decisions on the entire plan once again and then see if our decisions are impacting the entire planning of the city in a positive manner or not,” explained Dilip Prabhudessai.
Dilip feels that the committees rush to meet a deadline and that too when Forest Department has not replied to its grievances and the high chances of error in the last minute rush could have severe repercussions in the future. Dilip expressed his unhappiness on the last minute hurry and stated that he has written to the member secretary to relook into the draft plain.
