By Rajan Narayan

THE division bench of the Bombay High Court in Goa has lamented that Goa’s “beautiful land” is marred by illegal constructions. The division bench observed that “despite there being adequate statuary mechanisms and machinery available, the authorities concerned appear to be lax in the discharge of their duties. As a result the encroachers and others are emboldened to encroach upon government land and also there are illegal structures on the pieces of land that such constructions are prohibited, going to the extent of raising constructions without requisite statuary permissions. The remarks were made in response to a public interest litigation petition filed by the Goa Foundation on behalf of the Goa Bachao Abhiyan. There has been a spate of PILs filed against the conversion of agriculture and orchard land into settlements and commercial areas. Similarly, there have been complaints about blatant violations of the coastal regulations zone rules. There have even been complaints about illegal constructions coming up on communidade land.
The chief culprit seems to be the Town & Country Planning Department presided over by the TCP minister Vishwajit Rane. The TCP act has been amended to give the government and the TCP discretion to bring about changes in land use without prior permission. Indeed, an attempt was made to amend the TCP act to put decisions taken by the TCP outside the purview of the jurisdiction of the courts.
The most recent dramatic instance of the subversion of the Town & Country Planning Act was the motivated conversion by former chief secretary Puneet Kumar Goel in his capacity as TCP secretary. Goel is reported to have given his consent to the conversion of a paddy field in Aldona which he was interested in purchasing. The T&C planning minister, Viswajeet Rane quickly cleared the file seeking conversion of the paddy field in which Goel was interested. Subsequently, Goel purchased the property to build a farmhouse in Aldona.
A PIL is pending in the high court over the “colourable” misuse of power by the chief secretary. Not surprisingly the TCP minister Rane came to the defense of Goel and exonerated him of any impropriety. The tragedy is that senior officials of the Goa government are colluding with the officials at the centre and the state to grab property in Goa. It may be recalled that a senior officer belonging to the Research & Analysis Wing, the spy agency of the Indian government, forcibly took possession of a tenanted property in Assagao. The wife of the RTA agent Pooja Sharma hired bouncers both male and female and used the services of a don to bulldoze the property of the said tenant in Assagao. Pooja Sharma reportedly got the orchard converted to settlement and got rid of the tenant illegally to get free possession of the property. Though Chief Minister Pramod Sawant ordered an enquiry by the Crime Branch, the name of Pooja Sharma has been omitted from the charge sheet. There has been no talk about restoring the property.

RAW PLOTTING
RECENTLY, RAW has been in the news after the Canadian government accused a RAW agent Rajiv Yadav of plotting the murder of an Khalistani activist in the USA. The US government has asked for the extradition of the RAW raw agent who is reported to have offered 1 lakh dollars to an assassin to kill Pannu, a Khalistan Sikh leader based in the US.
Historically, it has been the fashion for the bold and the beautiful and rich and powerful to acquire farmhouses on the outskirts of New Delhi, in Meharally outside Delhi and Alibag island close to Mumbai. Farm houses have come up on the outskirts of Bangalore also. Till a decade ago the rich residents of Delhi and Bombay were only interested in beach front properties in Goa. But the trend changed with more and more investors in real estate seeking farmhouses in the green villages of Goa. Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru residents want to own villas in Goa and are completely transforming the face of the serene green Goan villages. In a sense those looking for second homes and properties for investment in the villages of Goa are beginning to destroy the very ambience that drew them to the Goan villages in the first place.
For many decades there was a very charming village called Assagao, close to Anjuna, which was known as the Valley of flowers. Assagao was a two-lane village with a historical church and just a few old ancestral homes. It suddenly caught the fancy of real estate developers about a decade ago. Offers which were impossible to refuse were made to the traditional residents of the village and very soon large villas with self-contained swimming pools came up in Assagao.
To meet the needs of the new migrants some very up-market restaurants, patisseries and delicatessen shops, as also fashion attire boutiques came up in Assagao. To the extent that Goan non-residents from abroad and elsewhere in India who returned to their ancestral homes in Goa complained that Assagao has turned into another Gurgaon clone. Other villages which have been targeted by builders are Siolim, Saligao, Parra and other secluded villages like Moira in north Goa. The Goan villages have always attracted people with high net worth who want to get away from the maddening crowd of the big crowded stinking cities.

GOA IS STARRY STATE
JUST about every film star and celebrity already has a home in Goa. This includes the likes of Kajol and Ajay Devgan, Sachin Tendulkar, Dr Mukesh Batra and even prominent personalities from the UK and the USA. At a party held at the late Wendel Rodrigues’s ancestral house in Tivim which we remember going to some years ago we met a former independent TV producer Christopher Morahan who made the Jewel in the Crown series. The bold and the beautiful the rich and the powerful do not integrate with the locals nor do they contributed anything to Goan society because they bring their own cooks, butlers and drivers. In any case, the mushrooming of luxury villas in the villages only benefits migrant construction labor.
In the last two years post-Covid pandemic and lockdowns there has been an explosion of real estate development. Goan builders including the most ambitious of them limited themselves to multi-storied apartment complexes like the Mathai Plaza in Dona Paula. The exception is the Aldeia de Goa project promoted by a Bombay builder on the hills slopes going down to Bambolim hills where the Grand Hyatt is now. On the pattern of the Aldeia de Goa the DLF Group of Delhi is promoting a mega luxury housing project in Reis Magos, here super luxury villas are coming up over a spread of 1,500 sq meters. The group proposes to build 60 such villas on the fragile hill slopes of Reis Magos. Of course, the sanctity of the Reis Magos church and the Reis Magos prison are endangered.
Similarly, a builder is promoting the Bhutani multistoried housing complex in Sancoale. This envisages a dozen super luxury complexes with a static price at Rs8 crore each. Similar real estate projects are under way in the villages of Siolim, Saligao, Moira and Aldona. There have been a number of cases of violation of the Coastal Regulation Zone rules. These rules specify that no construction can come up within 200 meters of the high tide line in the coastal belt areas. Historically, the government has cheated by declaring sea fronts as river fronts in various parts of Tiswadi taluka. For instance, the sea coast outside Cidade da Goa and the Grand Hyatt are considered riverfront beaches. This enables construction within 100 meters of the high tide line.
The National Green Tribunal has taken serious notice of such large-scale violations of the CRZ rules in Goa. While the government has chosen to turn a blind eye, amongst the most high profile cases served notice is Ashish Mehra for illegal constructions in the CRZ in south Goa, notice has also been served to Ritu Beri, the fashion designer who is building a boutique hotel in Anjuna. Notice has also been issued to fashion designer Tahir Tahiliani who created the shoddy designer wear uniforms for the India Olympic contingent.

100 VILLAGES ECO-SENSITIVE
THE Central Pollution Control Board had designated over 100 villages in Goa as forming part of the eco-sensitive zone. In view of the dramatic impact of climate change we have been witnessing there is now a renewed concern about protecting the environment of Goa. The veteran environmentalist VN Gadgil had declared a large section of the Western Ghats adjoining Goa and passing through Goa as highly eco-sensitive. The government has banned any construction within two kms of the villages declared as eco-sensitive.
However, in Goa, even mines have been permitted to operate in eco-sensitive areas including within the Bhagwan Mahavir Sanctuary and Mollem. The Electricity department has compounded the problem by proposing a high voltage 500 Mv transmitter in the heart of the Mollem sanctuary. The transmitter station is expected to receive and redirect power from Kolhapur and this has been strongly objected too also by environmentalists.
Not surprisingly TCP Minister Vishwajit Rane Has asked for the deletion of Satteri taluka from the list of eco-sensitive villages. There is an ongoing controversy also about the proposal to declare part of Satteri taluka and the Mollem Wildlife Sanctuary as a tiger reserve. The Mollem sanctuary serves as a corridor for the Kali tiger reserve in Karnataka. Vishwajit Rane has been vehemently opposing the project claiming that there are human settlements inhabited by tribes which would be affected. The truth is he wants to protect the mines operating in Satteri taluka.
Though there have been statewide protests against mega luxury real estate projects there has been little response from the government. Strengthening the suspicion that these projects have come up with the blessings of the chief minister and Town & Country Planning minister.
What is heartening is that various panchayat bodies seem to have risen in protest. Recently, there was a strong objection in the Sancoale panchayat against the Bhutani project. There have been strong protests from the Majorda and Betalbatim projects to mega housing and hotel projects. Curiously the person who is heading the protest is former tourism minister Mickky Pacheco. Though the TCP may permit large-scale conversions, it is the panchayat which issues construction licenses. Unfortunately, even democratic institutes like the panchayat are vulnerable and have been corrupted in places. Perhaps one can’t blame them for the stakes are so huge that they all fall victim to greed.
The DLF project at Reis Magos will see an investment of over Rs10,000 crore. Even villages in the hinterland like Mayem have not been spared in Bicholim. The Lodha group which is notorious in Mumbai for its concrete structures in Andheri West is planning to build super luxury farm houses which envisage an investment of Rs15,000 crore. There is too much money coming into Goa which nobody seems to be able to resist. The Goa Bachao Abhiyan and a few activists like Dean d’Cruz are fighting a lonely battle, he is the chairperson of the Goa Foundation.