PANAJI
In a major policy decision, the State government on Friday announced to amend the Comunidade Code to regularise all unauthorized residential constructions on comunidade land up to 300 sq mtrs before February 28, 2014.
The amendment will empower the comunidade bodies to regularise encroachments of the land parcels while deputy collectors would look into legalisation of the structures on those plots.
Revenue Minister Atanasio ‘Babush’ Monserrate along with Transport Minister Mauvin Godinho and MLA Nilesh Cabral had a meeting to review the proposal of regularising unauthorised structures on comunidade land. The government has decided that only residential constructions would be regularised while in case of commercial structures, the land would be reverted to the comunidade.
Addressing media persons post meeting, Monserrate said that the government has reached a policy decision to amend the Comunidade code with a provision so that unauthorised residential constructions done on plots up to 300 sq mtrs on the comunidade land before February 28, 2014 can be regularised.
“No commercial structures would be taken up for regularisation. Also, beyond 300 sq mtrs, the encroached land will have to be reverted back to the comunidade,” he said.
Monserrate explained that the comunidade bodies will be given powers to regularise only the land parcels, where the structures have come up or encroachment is being done; the deputy collectors will handle the structure legalisation part.
“The occupants will have to make application to the concerned comunidade bodies, who will have powers to either accept or reject the applications. The applications would be processed on payment of land price as fixed by the sub-registrar office,” he explained further.
Godinho said that only the residential houses would be taken up for regularisation. “We are not encouraging illegalities but aim is to see that in future no such things are repeated. The amendment will also give powers to administrators to act against such illegal structures in future,” he said.
During the Comunidade Convention 2024 held in January, components had raised red flag to the government proposals. Gaonkars had raised their strong objection to legalising the illegal structures stating that it would be against the Court verdicts.
The convention adopted a resolution which called for deliberations and recommendations to address illegal constructions and encroachments in comunidade lands and to prevent such illegalities in future.
