A preliminary in quiry by the Directorate of Vigilance has exposed seri ous lapses and procedural violations in the Town and Country Planning (TCP) Department’s assessment of fees and approval of zoning corrections — ir regularities that have re sulted in a massive revenue shortfall and opened the door to questionable land conversions in ecologically sensitive areas. The vigilance probe found that the TCP was required to collect over Rs 33.54 crore from 32 files as per the en hanced rates notified on March 28, 2024. Instead, the department initially charged only Rs 6.38 crore under the old rate structure, later recovering Rs 19.82 crore after reassessment. Even then, the short-levied amount that ought to be recovered stands at Rs 13.72 crore, indicating a serious lapse in financial diligence. Last month, the High Court of Bombay at Goa disposed of a writ petition filed by activists Swapnesh Sherlekar, Jose Carlos da Veiga Gracias and Rupesh Shinkre, who had sought a probe into the revenue loss across 120 zoning cases under Section 17(2) of the TCP Act. The court noted that an inquiry was already underway to recover the deficit fees. Adv Rohit Bras De Sa appeared for the petitioners. The Vigilance Department’s findings paint a troubling picture.
It observed that the then Chief Town Planner (CTP) continued to levy fees at Rs 200 per sqm, as per the super seded March 15, 2023 notification, instead of the revised Rs 1,000 per sqm mandated from March 28, 2024. This ‘ex facie short levy’, the inquiry said, made reassessment and recovery unavoidable. Equally alarming were procedural gaps. In most zoning correction files, no proper site inspection reports were found. Instead, vague checklist-style notes were attached, with no indication of the inspecting officer’s name or designation. The Expert Committee’s scrutiny was found to be even more compromised: it ‘totally ignored’ the zon ing classifications of Regional Plan 2001 and 2021 as well as the actual on-ground land characteristics while recom mending conversions. Records showed several instances where lands sur rounded by green vegetation, orchard zones or no-de velopment slope areas were recommended for direct conversion into settlement zones — in blatant disregard of established norms. In some cases, the committee’s recommendations lacked even basic reasoning, raising serious questions about arbitrary or motivated deci sion-making.
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Pursuant to the High Court’s March 5, 2025 direc tion, the TCP undertook reassessment and recovered deficient fees in 119 applications. But the deeper concern lies in what the Vigilance inquiry uncovered: nearly nine lakh square metres of land originally marked as Natural Cover/Orchard/No Development Slope had been approved for settlement classification. Many applications for ‘correction of inadvertent error’ appeared to be a façade to regularise previous illegal land-use changes. The inquiry warns that indiscriminate zone alterations — often made ‘as per the convenience of the applicant’ — pose a direct threat to Goa’s fragile ecosystems. “It is high time,” the report states, “that all stakeholders make a concerted effort to ensure systematic, well-planned and sustainable development so that the ecologically sensitive and fragile ecosystem of Green Goa is not irreversibly dam aged.
