TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar said he would keep the Regional Plan open in the first week of July for allowing each village to plan for their own development akin to the Swedish model of plebiscite.
He said that there would be clearly defined development models for villages to choose, subject to safeguards which would allow State projects to be out of the purview of village development.
“Let the village as a whole decide. If a village is of 3,000 people and only 30 attend a gram sabha, that does not represent the village. There should be at least 75 per cent,” Parrikar said adding that this and other guidelines would be issued for rectifying the regional plan.
The issue of the ‘rectification’ of the regional plan or drawing up a new one was one of the issues that the BJP had promised in the run up to the elections, and had made into an election issue.
However, having completed a year and three months in government, Parrikar has yet to begin reviewing the plan, inviting criticism from civil society groups, who accused him of delaying the plan, even as other development proposals, many of them large projects were being cleared, in the absence of a comprehensive plan for the State.
BUFFER ZONE: Parrikar on Thursday said that the fate of the 28 mines that fall within the one km buffer zone around wildlife sanctuaries, is yet to be decided.
“What is to be done with the existing mines that fall within one kilometre of the buffer zone is to be decided,” Parrikar said.
He said that buffer zone would be site-specific as well as subject to natural geographical boundaries.
“The Dr Salim Ali Bird Sanctuary will have a 100m buffer zone,” Parrikar said adding further, “If there is a river within the one kilometre, the river will be the border.”
The issue of buffer zones is a long-pending debate with the Ministry of Environment and Forests decreeing a 10km buffer zone around all wildlife sanctuaries in the absence of any State demarcation of buffer zones. The government effort is to rectify that.
