MARGAO
Nearly two months after the Supreme Court cleared all legal decks for the demolition of the Hotel Silver Sands at Colva, heavy earth moving machinery was found working round the clock at the hotel to raze down the building structure on Wednesday.
This is perhaps the first time in recent history that a hotel building is being razed down to the ground for violation of CRZ norms following an order passed by the Goa
State Coastal Zone Management Authority (GCZMA). While the owner knocked the doors of the Supreme Court to stall the demolition cleared by the High Court, the Apex Court cleared all decks for the razing of the structure in April last.
Based on the directions by the High Court in a public interest litigation, the GCZMA after an inquiry had found that the petitioner had failed to place on record approvals for the structures in question and upon taking into consideration survey plans and documents on record, as well as mapping carried out by the office of the Survey Records, resolved that the hotel had failed to justify the existence of the structures at the hotel premises in Colva village and further resolved to pass demolition order against all the structures.
After the Supreme Court order dismissed the Special Leave Petition filed by the hotel, the PWD prepared estimates amounting to Rs 14-odd lakh, the funds that would be required to engage a specialised private agency. Even as the authorities were
dilly-dallying on the question of making the funds available before floating the tender to rope in the private agency, the hotel owner is believed to have engaged his own agency to carry out the demolition.
Incidentally, when The Goan called up the GCZMA Member Secretary Redkar on the demolition, he said, “Maybe the hotel owner has engaged the machinery to raze down the structure as per the GCZMA order.”
Executive Engineer, PWD, Prasad Panandikar informed that the PWD is not involved in the ongoing demolition exercise since the department is yet to receive the amount required to float a tender to execute the court order.
