1. The judicial mirage of protection
For generations, the Comunidades of Goa have represented a unique system of collective landholding founded on pre-liberation traditions of self-governance. Their continuity is secured by the Code of Comunidades enacted under Legislative Diploma 2070 of 15 April 1961. The expectation that the High Court will act as the constitutional protector of these institutions continues to influence public faith. Yet the judicial record shows otherwise. Petitions defending Communidade autonomy are almost invariably dismissed, often on the ground that legislative and executive measures fall within the bounds of constitutional values. The most notable example is the dismissal of Public Interest Litigation Writ Petition 811 of 2025 (F) filed against the State of Goa, in which the Division Bench upheld Article 31-A inserted into the Code of Comunidades by the Legislative Diploma 2070 (Amendment) Act 2025.
2. Reading the bench through numbers
The judgment in June 2025 was followed by another decision in October 2025 concerning the Tivim Comunidade, where members challenged the Government-approved long-term lease of over two lakh square metres of land to the MIT Group of Institutions. The petitioners alleged undervaluation, breach of Article 334-A of the Code, and lack of a valid Government scheme. The Division Bench of Justices Hon’ble Smt. Justice Bharati Dangre and Hon’ble Shri Justice Ashish S. Chavan dismissed the petition, holding that the lease served an educational public purpose and that Government approval was adequate. The following week, in a separate matter, seven Comunidades sought a stay on the regularisation of structures. The Bench declined interim relief, recording the State’s explanation that ensuring shelter was a constitutional consideration and that removal of long-standing encroachments was impracticable. When these three rulings are coded linguistically, the ratio between rights-protective expressions and State-deferential expressions produces what may be called a Deference Index. In simple numerical form, the Deference Index equals the frequency of deference phrases divided by the frequency of rights-protective phrases. In the Pinto case, the ratio was about three to one, in the Tivim case four to one, and in the regularisation case three and a half to one. When weighted by the importance of final decisions, the composite result equals approximately three and a half. This means that for every phrase affirming collective or property rights, about three and a half expressions endorse legislative or executive authority. The figure reflects a consistent pattern of judicial reasoning that privileges governance over communitarian autonomy.
3. Language as judicial behaviour
Analytical tools such as NVivo and MAXQDA allow judgments to be read not only for their outcomes but also for their vocabulary. When the Goa Bench judgments authored or co-authored by Justice Dangre during 2025 are examined as a text corpus, certain phrases recur with striking regularity: constitutional values, public purpose, legislative competence, developmental imperative, intention of the legislature, and policy wisdom. Terms like community autonomy or collective ownership appear far less frequently. The language of governance has therefore replaced the language of guardianship. The high Deference Index is not a measure of bias but of interpretive orientation.
4. Development as the new constitutional morality
The shift in language parallels a deeper transformation in doctrine. Development has been reimagined as the highest constitutional value. Each amendment to the Code of Comunidades since 2013 has followed the same trajectory, recasting collective land as a resource to be harnessed for public or quasi-public use. The Legislative Diploma 2070 (Amendment) Act 2025, which introduced Article 31-A, is emblematic of this trend. By categorising community land as an estate subject to State regulation, the amendment effectively placed Comunidades within the architecture of developmental governance. Judicial interpretation has followed suit. Whether the case concerns an educational lease or a housing regularisation scheme, the Bench views development as a legitimate constitutional objective and community control as an outdated privilege. The result is a jurisprudence of benevolent displacement, where the promise of public benefit is used to justify the gradual extinction of collective tenure.
5. Faith misplaced in the constitutional court
The tendency to seek judicial redress for every assault on Comunidade autonomy overlooks the more fundamental problem of governance. The High Court, as a constitutional sentinel, can only adjudicate on the legality of a measure once enacted. The process that shapes those measures originates in the Revenue Department, which has become the principal engine of transformation. Through incremental amendments, long leases, concessional valuations, and regularisation of encroachments, the Department has converted the doctrine of public purpose into a mechanism of acquisition by consent. The court’s repeated endorsement of such initiatives stems not from hostility to the Comunidades but from the legislative design placed before it.
The erosion of the Comunidades is primarily administrative, executed through statutes that the judiciary, bound by precedent and presumption of validity, has little scope to overturn.
6. A future beyond judicial deference
If the survival of the Comunidades is to move beyond ritual litigation, reform must begin within governance itself. The State should be mandated to publish transparent data on leases, valuations, and reversion proceedings, and legislative oversight must replace departmental discretion.
The evidence from the recent corpus of cases is unambiguous: when the court defers, the Comunidades diminish.
