SERNABATIM:Just a week after Chief Town Planner Rajesh Naik presented a proposal from the Colva Panchayat to show a non-existing road over sand-dunes in the Colva Regional Plan, a 6-meter sand-dune in the area has been levelled to create a road within 250 meters of the high tide line. Locals informed that a JCB was operating on Thursday night.
The sand from the dune was removed and dumped further south to create a road stretching around 150 meters long and around meters wide. Herald tried contacting the Director of Environment Mr Jha who stated that the issue will be taken on priority.
Curiously, the land on which the sand dune falls is marked as settlement zone on the Regional Plan 2021 and is in the name of a Mumbai company. The land bearing survey number 9/1 has an area of around 11000 sq.mts.
Local resident Judith Almeida informed Herald that the individual who is behind this lives abroad and has come down recently. “The gramsabha had objected to this property being marked as settlement since it is a sanddune but the Chief Town Planner has ignored all of it and gone ahead and operationalised the RP2021. The sand dunes are the natural barriers. If they are allowed to be cut, our fate will be worse than Kerala and the TCP Department will be responsible,” she said.
