PANAJI
A whopping 16,039 square meters of hitherto marked green in the land-use zoning of the 'Regional Plan 2021' has been flipped to 'settlement' zoning via the recent amendment to the Town & Country Planning Act which empowered the Chief Town Planner to make such corrections purportedly on grounds it was originally erroneously marked green or 'natural cover'.
These "corrected" land-use zoning of 16,039 square meters is in four locations including the hot in the property market Assagao village where 10,000-odd square meters of 'natural cover' land will now be 'settlement' land.
The notification making these 'corrections' and issued by the Chief Town Planner also mentions 1,318 square meters in Deussua, Salcete is changed from 'paddy field' to settlement zone.
At Oxel in Bardez too a 'paddy field' within an irrigation command area admeasuring 2,787 square meters has been corrected to 'Settlement' zone.
Yet another paddy field of 1,834 square meters at Queula in Ponda taluka too was "corrected" to settlement zone.
Piloted by TCP Minister Vishwajit Rane in the budget session of the Goa legislative assembly in March, the controversial amendment inserts an additional sub-section 17(2) to the TCP Act, which empowers the CTP to make these 'corrections' on the government's direction on the premise that the zoning in the RP-21 was erroneous.
Goa's greens have challenged the law in the High Court. They argue that it in effect destroys the purpose of the decennial macro-scale planning and formulation of Regional Plans.
Rane however justifies the tweak in the law proffering the argument that landowners have suffered with the RP-2021 erroneously zoning nearly 6-crore square meters of land as 'non-settlement'.
