An eight storey building overlooking the sensitive defencemanufacturing facility Goa Shipyard Limited has raised the hackles of thestate’s chief town planner P. S. Putturaju. He said "The building is worryingand should not have been constructed”. This project on the plateau of Vaddem cameup in 2009 and The Goan has found that Mormugao’sOutline Development Plan notified on February 6, 2009 of which this building isa part of may actually have violated not just one but several laws..
For example, the mega-residential complex atop Vaddem plateauoverlooking GSL violates Government of India’s Section 7 of The Work of DefenceAct 1903 Section 7 which prevents the construction of high rise buildings,metallic structures, high tension lines, telephone cables etc in a vicinity of200 metres of a military manufacturing establishment.
What is happening here is that a residential complex overlooksthe GSL’s sprawling 10,000+ sq. metre defence establishment. For anyanti-social and anti-national element, it is very easy to climb atop thesebuildings and fire a missile into the yard. Mormugao Planning and Development Authorityhad granted permissions to the builders of this complex as early as 2004. Atthat point of time the new ODP was not there but the Law was in existence.
When an alarmed GSL rushed to the MPDA and wrote to Collector(South Goa) to stop this construction, MPDA Member Secretary Rajinder Panditadefended the construction saying ”We follow the rule book which is the Town and CountryPlanning Act and Rules 1974”.
But then, the real estate mushrooming around GSL is not theonly flaw in Mormugao’s ODP. MPDAearmarked the city’s garbage dumping yard atop a cliff overlooking the sea.This is in violation of the Prof. Swaminathan committee’s draft report on Coastal ManagementZone (CMZ) Notification which states that garbage sites near the coastline evenas far as 500 metres away or CRZ 4 will not be permitted. The committee hadeven remarked that municipalities, panchayats and government bodies who thinkthat these structures and establishments will be regularized “would tantamountto legalizing violations and creating precedence for further negation of CRZregulations”
Speaking further, Panditasaid that the garbage zone was earmarked purely because of precedence. Howeversince both GCZMA and GSPCB had withdrawn their permissions, why did the MPDAnot read the CRZ Act then?
