PANAJI
The Goa Legislative Assembly on Wednesday passed an amendment to the Town and Country Planning Act, by which the State government will acquire the powers to modify in bits and parts the prevailing Regional Plan of the State out of turn.
Until now, the exercise of comprehensively redrawing the Regional Plan was decennial, although in the recent past it has overrun the deadlines.
The amendment bill was opposed by members of the Opposition citing various reasons, including that the State-wide planning process for land use would be jeopardised and the power to modify the RP would be abused whimsically.
However, TCP Minister Vishwajit Rane, who piloted the amendment, sought to allay fears of the Opposition members saying it is meant to correct glaring anomalies in the RP-2021, where many landholders across the State were being wronged due to the errors.
He also said the route to make land-use changes in RP through the controversial 16B amendment has been abandoned following the judicial proceedings in the matter challenging it in the High Court.
Only around 1,000-odd cases which had been processed and reached the final stage during the tenure of his predecessor are being reviewed by a committee headed by Chief Town Planner James Mathew, Rane said.
He also said that the balance 6,000-odd applications received under the 16B amendment will be dumped.
Rane said, although the RP-2021 was hailed as a good plan as several ‘experts’ and top-notch consultants were involved in its preparation, there were several mapping errors and wrong depiction of land zoning.
“Even when experts are engaged, the outcome is not always perfect,” Rane said and pointed out that in one specific case in St Cruz the landholder made multiple rounds of the TCP department to correct the land-use zone of his land, unsuccessfully.
“His land was zoned as settlement. But it had become orchard in the RP. He has since died and now his widow is following-up the matter,” Rane said.
The RP-2021 was prepared by a widely appreciated consultative process during the 2007-12 tenure of the Digambar Kamat-led government. The consultative process was adopted after the controversial previous plan (RP-2011) was prepared during 2005-07 tenure of Pratapsing Rane.
It had triggered a State-wide agitation spearheaded by a civil society conglomerate Goa Bachao Abhiyan.
