The present Town and Country Planning minister has declared that no new Regional Plan will be drafted and that taluka level zonal plans will now replace the RP. Urban planners, civil society and environmentalists are totally opposed to this flawed proposal because it will facilitate the current trend of piecemeal land conversion. There is no legal basis for scrapping the RP as the Goa Town and Country Planning Act itself states that zoning plans have to necessarily conform to a Regional Plan, in effect the government is contravening the law. A zoning plan is basically a granular subset of the broad Regional Plan but if the mother plan itself is discarded what can a zonal plan achieve. Moreover numerous zonal plans will facilitate a 'below the radar' kind of land grab wherein large swathes of fertile agricultural land would turn into concrete jungles which in turn would have a deleterious impact on the climate owing to the heat island effect and also contribute towards pushing down the water table. What the minister should infact do is to strictly implement the recommendations of the RP2021 rather than wreaking more destruction on our beautiful state.
