The private beach shack owners may be up in arms, but the ruling by the National Green Tribunal needs to be viewed at from an environmental standpoint, not a legal one. Right now, the NGT has asked that all private shack licences be revoked, a ruling that the High Court of Bombay at Goa has stayed.
The case was filed by Aleixo Pereira, whose contention was that the Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority had given 335 licences for beach shacks in private properties without completing a sand dune survey and a tourism beach carrying capacity survey. This was mandated by the NGT, where the tribunal asked the GCZMA to carry out studies that assess the carrying capacity of beaches in the state for providing beach shacks and other temporary structures in an environmentally sustainable manner. In December 2014, the NGT had asked the GCZMA to conduct these studies within six months and then grant licences for 2015-16. These studies were not done. It is here that the private shacks owners’ contention that the government is not sympathetic to their concerns and well-being can be well construed.
Beach shack licences are given from October-November, and the temporary structures are taken down in May before the monsoon. Over the past decade or so, the bidding war for shack licences got heated, as more and more players jumped into the fray. This prompted the tourism department, the other government department involved in this furore, to grant five year licences to those shacks set up on government property, the beaches. On the other hand, private shacks are set up on property adjoining the beaches and do not come into the beach carrying capacity assessment, from a superficial standpoint. This argument was used by the GCZMA before the NGT.
But there is a glitch in the system. Private shack owners pay a large amount of money as a license fees to the government, sometimes more than five star hotels, depending on whether they also provide accommodation in the form of beach huts. Under those circumstances, with structures built on the beach, the carrying capacity study applies.
But the National Green Tribunal is not a court. It will look at the environmental implications of the licences being granted without adequate studies being conducted. A court can assess whether businesses being affected can be cause for a stay, which is what the High Court has done. The government has to step in here and provide assistance in the form of the required studies, so that the private shack owners can get their businesses up and running.
Private property owners still have to run around and get licences from over a dozen different windows and pay a large sum for the private licences, considering they are not enabled by the government machinery the way the beach shack owners are. Their contention that their business will suffer is genuine. They also have demands as to the process of licensing and other documentation. They may be private shack owners but they do contribute to the tourism outlook of the State in terms of beach tourism and hence cannot be put in the same bracket as the bigger concrete hotels.
In this case, there will have to be some middle ground found for this season. Once it ends, the government’s job to make sure this does not happen again, should begin.
