PANAJI
Even as it has now become law, the amendment to the The Goa Legislative Diploma No. 2070 dated 15-4-1961 which provides for granting ownership of up to 300 square metres of land to encroachers who have built houses illegally, is heading for judicial scrutiny by the courts.
Multiple Comunidades, individual components of comunidades and civil society groups are preparing to file writ petitions before the Bombay High Court at Goa while on the other hand the State administration is preparing to bring the law into force by preparing the rules for quasi-judicial processes envisaged in the amendment.
Authoritative government sources said the revenue and law departments have been tasked with the job of coordinating and coming out with the rules which will have to then be notified to make the amendment implementable.
Meanwhile, Benaulim MLA, Venzy Viegas who called the piece of legislation untenable in law and had petitioned the Governor to withhold assent, said it will definitely face multiple challenges in the courts of law.
He advised Goans who own houses in Comunidade land not to fall prey to this scheme of the government which is bound to fall through in the courts as it blatantly violates the rule of law.
"People who apply under this amendment will be straddled with huge sums of their money locked in the State treasury. Land ownership documents issued by the government will not be worth the paper when the courts strike down the amendment itself," Viegas, who himself heads the large land-holding Comunidade of Carambolim, said.
He said the fate of the applicants will be the same as in the case of those who have invested thousands of crores and are now in dire straits because the Bombay High Court has struck down similar illegal amendments to the TCP Act by the same government.
Viegas also said that remedies are possible under the Comunidade Code itself to resolve issues of people with unauthorised houses but this scheme of the government violates basic rule of law and courts across the country, including the Supreme Court of India have come down heavily on such machinations multiple times.
Margao-based Savio Correia, a prominent protagonist of the Comunidade system Savio Correia also said that several of these bodies, individual components or Gauncares and civil society groups are bent on putting this new law of the State government through the scrutiny of the judiciary.
"There are Comunidades which are preparing to go to court officially as private bodies. Several individual components I know are also going to court separately. I also know of some groups of activists who are going to challenge this law," Correia told The Goan.
The amendment which was passed in the monsoon session of the Goa legislative assembly provides for granting via quasi-judicial processes ownership of upto 300 sq mts of land to those who have built houses prior to February 28, 2014 on payment of the land value as per government circle rates.
