WHAT GBA WANTS
* Keep all ‘planning’ on hold until brought in tune to the 73rd and 74th amendments
* The authority of all PDAs should be struck down and they should cease to exist
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What we are instead seeing is that each person in power wants to have control over the planning process when the planning should instead be with the people----------------------------
- Sabina Martins
PANAJI: The Goa Bachao Abhiyan has pledged its support to the call by ‘Goenkar against PDAs’ to rise against Planning and Development Authorities (PDAs) and has asked people to attend the April 6 meeting at Azad Maidan in Panaji in large numbers.
Addressing a press conference, GBA convenor Sabina Martins called the PDAs a ‘cancer’ which was spreading through villages and has demanded that all ‘planning’ be kept on hold until the planning processes are brought in tune to the 73rd and 74th amendments to the constitution.
“What we are instead seeing is that each person in power wants to have control over the planning process when the planning should instead be with the people. Till the acts reflect the constitutional mandate of the 73rd and 74th amendments to the constitution we will not allow any ‘planning’ to take place,” Martins told a press conference.
The GBA pointed to the Goa Town and Country Planning Amendment Bill 2009, which was brought before the Goa Legislative Assembly on March 24, 2009, but was never taken up for consideration or passed.
“The bill if it were to pass would give more power to the people and leave less power in the hands of ministers and the TCP Department. No city or village is safe until the enactment of the 73rd and 74th amendments to the constitution,” Martins said.
“The authority of all PDAs should be struck down and they should cease to exist,” Martins said.
The GBA also said that a clear-cut policy was not only in the interest of local Goans fighting to preserve their land but also from a business point of view.
“Every time, the people go to the courts and get licences for projects stayed or cancelled, businesses and investments suffer. This doesn’t have to happen. All the government needs to do is amend the Act and then the people won’t have to go to courts anymore because they will be consulted before any development plans are drawn up,” Reboni Saha the General Secretary of the Goa Bachao Abhiyan has said.
Several examples were cited where projects were stopped or had to be cancelled because of various court orders. “Why are people being made to go to court every time?” Saha asked.
Others pointed out how the PDA, especially the Calangute Candolim PDA was only a ruse to fill up agricultural fields and regularise them.
“In the guise of the PDA, they only want to convert all zones into PDA and regularise them. Even though Parra, Nagoa and Arpora are low-density villages they were plucked and added in a PDA. None of the villagers of Parra wants this,” Benedict D’Souza who is battling against the Calangute Candolim PDA has said.
He said that land-filling is rampant in Parra under the premise that everything will be regularised once the PDA is finalised.
