PANAJI
The Bombay High Court at Goa has dismissed with costs, a bunch of petitions filed by persons, including the very president of the Sancoale comunidade who have illegally encroached upon the lands of the Sancoale comunidade and directed that all structures that have been set up upon these lands by the encroachers be demolished.
In a judgement passed on Thursday, Justice M S Sonak also asked the Revenue Secretary to decide whether Mardolkar owing to his history of illegally encroaching upon comunidade land is fit to be allowed to continue as the president.
“The petitioners are directed to demolish the structures in the encroached portion and to restore the encroached portion to the Comunidade within four weeks from today,” the High Court said.
The petitioners who include Gaurish Naik, Pratap Mardolkar, Mariano Coutinho and Ramnath Naik challenged an order dated 06.09.2019 made by the Administrator of Comunidades, South Zone, Margao Goa rejecting their applications for review of the order dated 03.11.2017 by which the Administrator had declined to regularise the brazen encroachments carried out by the petitioners upon the Comunidade’s property surveyed under No.115/1, Sancoale, Goa. After encroaching upon Comunidade’s property, the petitioners constructed unauthorised structures therein for commercial use.
The petitioners, it is apparent, are influential persons, some of whom are presently, in the management of the Comunidade of Sancoale, whose lands they have encroached upon. For example, Pratap Mardolkar, the petitioner in Writ Petition No.987/2019, is the President of the Comunidade of Sancoale and also an admitted encroacher on the same Comunidade’s property, the High Court observed.
The High Court noted how, the petitioners first encroached upon the comunidade property by constructing shops in the year 2001 and only after that, in 2003 the comunidade resolved to allot the plots where such encroachment was made by the petitioners.
“This resolution of the general body is ex-facie illegal and without jurisdiction. No comunidade property can be allotted based upon such resolutions of the general body and without obtaining prior approval of the government. The general body cannot make such allotments for a commercial or non-commercial user by determining the rate of the comunidade property on an ad-hoc basis at a paltry Rs 75 per sq mtr. Significantly, none of the petitioners even seek to defend the resolution of the general body dated 01.06.2003, perhaps realising that the same is ex-facie indefensible,” the High Court said.
Even though the demolition/restoration order was made in 2006 and attained finality in 2010, no action was taken against any of the petitioners, who continued to enjoy the fruits of their brazen encroachment upon the comunidade’s property, the High Court also observed.
