MARGAO
The civil society has red-flagged the draft rules proposed for the Amendment of Goa Land Revenue (Conversion of use of land and non-agricultural assessment) Rules, 1969.
While demanding that the draft rules are scrapped completely, the organisations have demanded new rules be drawn up in consultation with the local communities to strengthen the regulation of land use changes and ensure its protection from conversion as required by the Supreme Court orders, other laws and social and environmental necessities listed.
Civil society has further demanded that immediate orders be passed to ensure compliance with the Supreme Court orders and other legal and socio-environmental requirements.
Lodging its strong objections to the rules, the Federation of Rainbow Warriors asserted the proposed rules will dilute the existing laws for the protection of land use and are therefore unconstitutional, illegal and against the public interest.
Pointing out that unplanned and arbitrary conversion of land use is the primary reason for the destruction of Goa’s environment and sustainable economies, threatening the survival of future generations, the organisation said that speculative interests driven by greed are blindly seeking further conversions of land use that is completely against public interest and opinion, which is the biggest threat to Goa today.
“It is therefore essential, especially given the climate crisis and past destruction of the environment, that land use conversion should be strictly regulated and allowed only for individual housing and local education and health facilities."
"Instead, the draft rules attempt to dilute the requirements of consulting other authorities empowered to protect the environment and give discretionary powers to the Collector to grant permissions for conversion of land use in case other authorities fail to respond within 20 days,” Rainbow Warriors added.
Says Rainbow warriors general secretary Abhijit Prabhudesai: “The proposed amendments will lead to irreversible destruction of environmentally sensitive lands across the State at the hands of rich, greedy speculators and will cause an unprecedented collapse of Goa’s sustainable economies and large-scale displacement of Goans.”
Pointing out that NOCs mandatory under other laws are not included in the draft rules, the civil society said that conversion of land use cannot be considered without ensuring the protection of irrigated/prime agricultural lands, irrigation resources, wetlands, coastal areas, biodiversity, the environment at large, weaker sections of our society, village commons and other critical resources.
The Rainbow Warriors have listed out some of the mandatory legal and constitutional requirements for the protection of the environment, economies and society that have not been considered in the draft rules.
Citing the case of the Water Resources Department, Abhijit said the Command Area Development Act, 2010 and the Irrigation Act, 1973 empower WRD to protect irrigated agricultural lands and irrigation resources.
“It is therefore essential that prior NOC must be obtained from the WRD before granting any conversion permissions, especially since the RP 2021 prepared about 15 years ago does not reflect the correct and current position of areas protected by WRD under the Command Area Development Act, 2010 and the Irrigation Act, 1973,” he said.
He added: “By the National Water Policy, the WRD is also required to protect all the water recharge zones and catchment area, which would mean that the conversion of land use in Goa would require a prior report of the WRD that the said land does not fall within a water recharge zone or a catchment area.”
The Agriculture department, he said is another case in point. Stating that prior permissions from the Agriculture department must be compulsory before any agricultural land is permitted to be used for non-agricultural purposes, Abhijit said this is most important given Goa’s loss of food security due to unregulated land use changes in the recent past and climate crisis induced loss of low-lying lands and other agricultural resources that will decimate our food security in the future. The agricultural department must therefore be consulted before any land use change is considered, he added.
NGO demands to drop draft changes
THE GOAN NETWORK
MARGAO
The Goyche Fudle Pilge Katir has demanded that the draft changes for making the additions be dropped forthwith and no notification be issued further for making it effective.
The NGO has objected to the Amendment of Rule 4 in the Goa Land Revenue (Conversion of use of land and non-agricultural assessment) Rules, 1969, which is proposed to be added with sub-rule (3) for the following reasons.
One, it was pointed out that for any land conversion and non-agricultural assessment, the Collector’s office refers the file to a minimum of four different departments. This process of reference is itself initiated after at least one week of working as the concerned dealing hand is entrusted with multiple works as well as revenue court matters, which limits daily working on such conversion matters.
Secondly, the NGO maintained that each department of the Town and Country Planning Department, Forest Department, Inspector of Survey & Land Records and Taluka Mamlatdar have to be individually addressed with the terms of reference, which also consumes a minimum of one week (on a very conservative basis) at the Collector's office.
President of the organisation, Jack Mascarenhas pointed out that the reference letters are signed by the Collector, their exit from the office is also a time-consuming affair, or could even be sent by post, or the concerned party has to pick it up for personal delivery and return the acknowledgement.
“The period of the countdown of 20 days is supposed to start from the date of reference made by the collector. So out of the said 20 days, five days may just get consumed for the letter to reach the concerned four offices,” he told the media.
“Conversion of use of land and non-agricultural assessment is a multi-disciplinary task impacting growth, planning, land use, environmental impacts, etc and therefore the concentration of powers without the competencies and expertise is highly undemocratic and will cause irreversible damage to our liveability in the cities and regions of Goa,” he said, adding “Within 20 days, mass conversion of use of land and non-agricultural assessment can get underway in an uncontrolled manner through a single office of the Collector, Revenue department.”
