Under suspension for over six years, selective revival of RP-2021 sounds as easy as apple pie for Town and Country Planning Minister Vijai Sardesai. It leaves everyone wondering why it was kept on hold for such a long period of time in the first place. The gullible Goan is made to believe that this move will help those waiting anxiously to construct a shelter for personal use. Is there a whiff of Goenkarponn in here?
Notified by the then Digambar Kamat government in December 2011, it was this very Regional Plan that was suspended by his successor Manohar Parrikar in 2012. A flurry of protests and agitations had forced people to come on the streets and fight for their land. RP-2021 had threatened to change the landscape of the State with large tracts of low-lying lands, forest, coastal and agricultural areas included in settlement zones.
Cut to the current term of the BJP-led government. Vijai, soon after assuming power of TCP, promised a new 2030 Plan within six months. The minister claimed that all deliberations of RP-2021 were closed, only to make a drastic and stunning U-turn of reviving it on a piecemeal basis. The Congress is now squeezed into the frame. Politicizing the issue by dragging in the Congress is not going to help the cause. If that is the case, then the government should also wait till Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar returns in a month’s time to make a statement on the very same plan he had put a freeze on.
Any decision now on the Regional Plan should have involvement of all the stakeholders including the public and not only political parties. The thousands of queries on zoning and even widths of roads forwarded to the then Chief Town Planner need to be addressed first. Irrespective of the intentions of the government, the Regional Plan-2021 provisions have to be thoroughly debated across the board. It cannot be forced down the throat of people overnight by those in power at their own sweet will and fancy.
TCP has been always at the forefront of corruption charges. In a more recent trend, agents have taken centre-stage claiming to have close links with the TCP, where land conversion is guaranteed at a price. Thanks to agents like these, major khazan lands at Pernem have seen rampant construction, which even include hotel projects in the guise of eco-tourism. The new airport area of Mopa is seen as a gold-mine-in-waiting in such a context.
The TCP Minister has just faced an embarrassment on the Greater Panaji PDA. Public outrage forced the government to drop all villages except Taleigao and Kadamba Plateau. A Regional Plan is encompassing the landscape of entire State and not a few villages like the PDAs. There is huge money and several stakeholders and investors involved, with the real-estate lobby at the core.
Let there be no hasty decisions on RP 2021. The genuineness and sincerity of the decision is being seriously questioned against the backdrop where several legislators within the current dispensation and outside are connected directly or indirectly to the real-estate lobby. Voices of the people have to be respected, for the root of Goenkarponn rests with the will of the people and not working against it.
