GCZMA to challenge NGT order on Agonda cottages before SC

PANAJI
The Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority (GCZMA) has decided to approach the Supreme Court challenging the National Green Tribunal’s (NGT) order quashing its approval for the erection of 25 temporary cottages and a shack at Agonda beach in Canacona.
The decision was taken at the GCZMA meeting held on September 29, following legal advice on the next course of action after the NGT’s Western Zone Bench, Pune, set aside the approval granted by the coastal authority on September 23, 2024, for the proposal in Survey Nos. 101/1 and 101/3 at Agonda.
“The Authority decided to file an appeal before the Hon’ble Supreme Court,” the GCZMA stated, citing the legal opinion obtained on the matter.
The authority has contended that its February 2019 decision restricting fresh applications for huts, shacks, tents and cottages on private properties and hotels within 0-200 metres of the High Tide Line (HTL) was a precautionary measure intended to protect beach ecology and prevent overcrowding. However, it maintained that the restriction was expressly applicable only until the finalisation of the Coastal Zone Management Plan (CZMP).
According to the GCZMA, following the notification of the CZMP on September 6, 2022, the earlier decision ceased to operate, allowing it to process and decide fresh applications in accordance with the applicable Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) regulations and the notified CZMP.
“Consequently, from 06.09.2022 onwards, the GCZMA is at liberty to process and decide fresh applications in accordance with the applicable CRZ regulations and the notified CZMP. Therefore, as per the legal opinion obtained, the Authority decided to file an Appeal before the Hon’ble Supreme Court,” it stated.
The NGT, in its order, had strongly criticised the authority’s decision to approve the project, describing its conduct as a “gross violation” of the Beach Carrying Capacity Report and the safeguards it had previously adopted for Agonda.
The Tribunal noted that the Beach Carrying Capacity and Sand Dune Mapping studies conducted by the National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM) had assessed Agonda as having zero additional carrying capacity for shacks. The study, accepted by the GCZMA in 2017, had recommended that no additional shacks, huts, tents or cottages be considered at the beach.
Agonda is also a designated Olive Ridley turtle-nesting site.
The NGT observed that despite the findings and the GCZMA’s own February 2019 decision restricting new applications within 200 metres of the HTL, the authority subsequently approved the proposal without providing a cogent explanation for departing from its earlier safeguards.
The Tribunal set aside the approval, citing the authority’s failure to adequately explain when and how its earlier restriction had been modified and its departure from the beach’s assessed carrying capacity.