MARGAO
The South Goa Planning and Development Authority (SGPDA) on Wednesday officially capped the exercise for submissions of objections and suggestions to the Outline Development Plan (ODP) 2032, even as PDA Chairman Krishna Salkar asserted that the ODP will be finalised and notified within the next two months.
The PDA has also constituted a three-member committee, including PDA Member Secretary Sheikh Ali, to scrutinise the objections and suggestions and hear the parties before they get back to the authority for a decision.
The SGPDA Chairman told the media after the meeting on Wednesday that all objections and suggestions received by the PDA to the draft-ODP 2032 to date will be accepted before they are scrutinised by the three-member committee. “It has been decided to accept all the objections and suggestions received to the draft-ODP to date. The three-member committee will hear the parties before taking the decision,” he said.
Promising that the SGPDA will try and complete the process transparently, Salkar assured to finalise the ODP within two months.
“TCP Minister Vishwajit Rane has given clear instructions to complete the ODP process in a transparent and time-bound manner so that people form a good opinion of the PDA,” he added.
He said the newly-constituted sub-committee will start the process of hearing the objections and suggestions, and the entire process will be completed in a time-bound manner. “I would like to assure the people of Margao, Fatorda and Ponda that the ODP exercise will be carried out transparently,” he said.
He added: “If you have a look at the previous ODP, there were several discrepancies, wherein roads were shown over houses, and in some cases, roads were never shown. All these discrepancies will be removed from the ODP. The new ODP will be finalised within two months.”
This is the second time in the last one year and the third time in the last three years that the SGPDA has gone about making changes in the ODP for Margao and Ponda planning areas. The first time the SGPDA notified the ODP 2028 was in 2019 before the government gave its nod in 2021 to review the plan with a draft ODP 2032. The ODP 2032 exercise was set in motion in December 2021, but could not be finalised due to the intervening Assembly polls. The draft-ODP 2032 had received around 163-odd objections and suggestions, but before they could be finalised and notified, the new government headed by Chief Minister Pramod Sawant in 2022 again decided to open the draft-ODP 2032 for objections and suggestions.
