The protests presently unfolding must be understood as a call for coherence, consistency, and constitutional responsibility
The ongoing protests across Goa against Section 39A of the Goa Town and Country Planning Act, 1974, are not merely expressions of political disagreement. They are manifestations of a deeper environmental anxiety shared by a society that has long understood its geography as fragile, finite, and ecologically distinctive. Goa has never functioned as a uniform landscape. Its villages, orchards, khazan lands, plateaus, wetlands, and forest belts have historically coexisted through carefully evolved land use patterns. It is this ecological heterogeneity that is now perceived to be under threat by a statutory provision that permits spot conversions of land use at the discretion of planning authorities, detached from broader spatial coherence.
Discretion without
consistency
Section 39A enables the conversion of land use within otherwise differently zoned areas, often allowing settlement zones to emerge amidst orchards, agricultural tracts, or ecologically sensitive parcels. Such conversions are not guided by a comprehensive regional plan but are instead processed individually. This discretionary model of planning has raised serious concerns regarding arbitrariness, inconsistency, and unequal treatment. When similarly placed landowners are treated differently without transparent and objective criteria, the democratic legitimacy of such administrative action becomes questionable. Planning law, by its very nature, is expected to operate on predictability and uniformity rather than selective accommodation.
Judicial warnings
already issued
The present controversy cannot be examined in isolation from recent judicial developments. In 2025, a Division Bench of the High Court of Bombay at Goa, speaking through Justice M. S. Karnik, read down Section 17(2) of the same Act. That provision had similarly enabled ad hoc land use changes through executive discretion. The Court underscored that town planning statutes are not instruments of convenience but mechanisms of structured development that must operate within constitutional discipline. The judicial concern expressed was not merely procedural but substantive, emphasising that piecemeal conversions fracture planning integrity and undermine environmental safeguards. The parallels between Section 17(2) and Section 39A are too pronounced to be ignored.
This reasoning aligns with settled Supreme Court jurisprudence. In M.C. Mehta v. Union of India (AIR 1997 SC 734), the Supreme Court held that environmental governance cannot be compromised by fragmented administrative decision making and that the precautionary principle must guide State action where irreversible ecological harm is foreseeable.
Similarly, in Lafarge Umiam Mining (P) Ltd v. Union of India (AIR 2011 SC 1421), the Court stressed that environmental clearances and land use decisions must be based on cumulative impact assessments rather than isolated project approvals. These judgments recognise that ecological damage is rarely confined to individual parcels of land and that uncoordinated permissions undermine both environmental protection and public trust.
National and comparative
planning norms
Across the rest of India, land use conversion is ordinarily undertaken through comprehensive planning exercises rather than isolated permissions. State planning laws generally require revisions to master plans, public consultations, environmental impact assessments, and alignment with regional development objectives. Conversion is treated as an exception rather than a routine administrative service. Internationally, urban planning has increasingly been aligned with climate resilience strategies. Global instruments such as the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, the Kyoto Protocol, and the Johannesburg Declaration stress integrated planning, precautionary principles, and sustainable land use. These frameworks recognise that urban expansion patterns directly influence carbon emissions, heat islands, water stress, and biodiversity loss.
Carbon footprints and
irreversible consequences
Unregulated spot conversions have consequences far beyond the boundaries of individual plots. Fragmented development increases vehicular dependence, strains local infrastructure, and disrupts natural carbon sinks such as orchards and agricultural land. The cumulative impact of such conversions accelerates regional carbon footprints and undermines India’s commitments under international climate frameworks. The Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, mandates the State to anticipate, prevent, and attack the causes of environmental degradation. When land use conversions are granted without holistic assessment, environmental protection is reduced to a post facto formality rather than a guiding principle.
A useful comparison can be drawn with Singapore, a developing jurisdiction where land is scarce and planning discipline is therefore treated as non negotiable.
Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority administers a statutory Master Plan that specifies permissible land use and development intensity, and is reviewed every five years to align medium term development with long term strategies.
The Planning Act in Singapore is structured around the principle that development must remain anchored to approved plans, with detailed interpretative maps and written statements being used to reduce ambiguity and discretionary deviation.
In effect, predictability is prioritised over plot by plot accommodation, because systemic coherence is treated as a public interest.
In Europe, land use change is increasingly constrained by planning duties that compel governments to account for environmental effects at the stage of policy and plan formation, not merely at the stage of individual approvals.
The EU Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive requires an environmental report, assessment of reasonable alternatives, public participation, decision making transparency, and monitoring when plans and programmes are prepared or adopted.
Separately, the EU Environmental Impact Assessment framework mandates that projects likely to have significant effects on the environment must not receive development consent without prior assessment.
These regimes reflect a consistent approach: piecemeal permissions are discouraged where cumulative harm can be produced across a region.
Ecology before
expediency
The debate surrounding Section 39A is not a contest between development and stagnation. It is a question of whether planning law will continue to function as an instrument of ecological foresight or be reduced to an administrative convenience.
The protests presently unfolding must therefore be understood as a call for coherence, consistency, and constitutional responsibility. If planning law ceases to protect ecological balance and intergenerational equity, it ceases to serve the public interest it was enacted to uphold.
