PANAJI
The Bombay High Court at Goa has slammed the Village panchayat of Calangute including Sarpanch Shawn Martins for failing to act against an illegal construction that came up without any permission within 200 metres of the High Tide Line and directed that the structure be demolished within ten days.
Hearing a petition filed by one Alex Fernandes, a fisherman and social activist, the High Court pulled up the panchayat for claiming that it couldn’t act against the structure due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
Fernandes in his petition filed complaints to the Panchayat and the Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority (GCZMA) that two respondents had commenced construction within 200 meters of the HTL which is a CRZ area.
Unfortunately, none of the Authorities were prompt in taking action. As a result of which the respondents completed the construction within four to five months, named it as ‘Typsy Villa’ and entered and occupied it. This is even though the construction has no permission from any of the Authorities and no occupancy certificate.
The High Court was not amused.
“This petition highlights an extremely disturbing feature as to how constructions are put up in CRZ areas without bothering to obtain any permissions from any Authorities and thereafter some sort of immunities are claimed based on the completion of such constructions at breakneck speeds by taking advantage of the circumstance that the enforcement was lax because the enforcement agencies were battling the COVID 19 pandemic,” the High Court bench of Justices M S Sonak and M S Jawalkar, said.
“According to us, this is a brazen violation of the law and the legal provisions in the matters of putting up constructions in a Panchayat area and that too in a CRZ area. Respondents are firmly convinced that as long as they race to complete the illegal construction and occupy the same, the law will never be able to catch up with them. The attempt thereafter is to institute all sorts of proceedings and delay the action against the wholly unauthorized construction put up in an eco-sensitive zone without seeking permissions from any authorities,” the High Court observed.
The Panchayat, in turn, claimed that the site was inspected on 09.09.2021 and the site inspection report indicates that the structure is totally illegal, in the sense that there was no existing structure but an entirely new structure has been put up.
Calangute Sarpanch Shawn Martins, in his affidavit before the High Court has said that there was no intention of protecting respondents, and the delay in initiating action was for the reasons indicated in the affidavit, which mainly concern combatting the COVID pandemic.
Besides ordering a demolition, the High Court also asked the GCZMA to inspect the site and determine the amount that should be paid for causing damage to the environment.
“The GCZMA should also visit the site and determine the damage to the environment on account of putting up such a structure in the CRZ area. Ultimately, respondents will have to make good the loss which they have caused to the environment by putting up a brazen, illegal, and unauthorized structure without permission from any Authorities whatsoever in a CRZ area. This exercise must be completed within six weeks from today,” the High Court said.
