By Rajan Narayan

THE Town & Country Planning Minister Vishwajit Rane is in the process of destroying the Bhartiya Janata Party in the state of Goa. The image of Chief Minister Pramod Sawant and the BJP has been severely damaged by the verdict of the Goa Bench of the Bombay high court. The high court has lashed out at TCP Minister Vishwajit Rane’s mindless destruction of agriculture and orchard land in Goa. The court has pointed out that since junior Rane became the TCP minister over 25 lakh hectares of agricultural land have been illegally converted.
Earlier, TCP ministers like Babush Monserrate have modified the Regional Plan to make conversion of paddy fields and orchards of coconut plantations into settlement and commercial zones. The most notorious example was when Babush Monserrate came up with the new Regional Plan 2011, which handed over the TCP department to the building lobby.
The BJP, then led by Manohar Parrikar, paid a very heavy price for the opportunistic alliance with MLAs like Babush Monserrate. It was the revolt against the RP 2011 which was created by Babush that led to the defeat of the BJP in the 2006 assembly election. Goans whether Hindu or Catholic are very proud of the green agricultural heritage of Goa. They are very sensitive to the conversion of Goa’s paddy and orchard lands into concrete jungles even on forested hilly lands.
It was the Goa Bachao Abhiyan (GBA) against RP 2021 promoted by Monserrate that saw a public revolt against Manohar Parrikar’s government. So widespread was the revolt that Digambar Kamat who succeeded Manohar Parrikar was forced to scrap RP 2011.

BIGGER ROLE
VISHWAJIT Rane has played a bigger role in the destruction of green Goa than any other TCP minister including Babush Monserrate. The floodgates of land conversion were opened by the amendment to 17 (2) of the Town & Country Planning Act. Through this amendment, the government (effectively meaning TCP minister, Vishwajit Rane), assumed the right to grant conversions at the minister’s discretion in violation of the regional plan enforcement. Under the amendment to section 17 (2}, the chief town planner (CTP} has been allowing the application of individual plot owners to change the zone of the lands if the original zoning has been inconsistent or incoherent. The big loop whole is the failure of the amendment to define the expressions as inconsistent or incoherent. This implies that there were mistakes in zoning in the regional plan enforced. The power given to the TCp to take a call on what is incoherent or inconsistent permits the arbitrator excise of power. The HC has concluded that there is no justification for abruptly changing the zone merely at the discretion of the Chief Town Planner. Particularly when the CTP acts on the instruction of the TCP minister the charge is that the TCP minister Vishwajit Rane has been misusing this discretionary power for the benefit of the big builders from outside the state. The amendment destroyed the sanctity of the regional plan which has been finalized by experts in the field and passed by the legislative assembly. Over a period of time the discretionary conversion which was supposed to be the exception became the norm.
The huge mega projects witnessed in the last four years during the current term of Dr Pramod Sawant’s government were facilitated by an amendment to Article 17A of the Town & Country Planning Act. The former chief justice of the Allahabad high court, Justice Ferdino Rebello, has pointed out that this is the first time that the Legislative Assembly of Goa has condoned and even promoted large-scale illegal conversions.
All the mega land deals in Reis Magos, Cortalim and Bicholim, were granted conversions under the illegal amendment to the Town & Country Planning Act by the Legislative Assembly at the instance of Vishwajit Rane. Now that the HC has struck down the amendment and all the conversions granted under the amendment, the future of the mega projects is at stake. It is not a coincidence that Vishwajit Rane’s first reaction was that the interests of investors should be protected. Vishwajit tragically is more concerned with the interests of the investors than the damage caused to Goa by the huge conversions of agriculture and orchard land.
The mischief of the TCP minister did not stop at amending the conversion roads to favour mega real estate deals. Every time there is a conversion whether it is a hundred meters or a lakh meters appropriate stamp duty has to be paid for by the government. From time to time the government revises the stamp duty to reflect the market rates. Though the index rate in various parts of Goa has increased steeply from an average of Rs 100 to as high as Rs 10,000, the TCP assessed the mega conversions for the big builders at a lower rate. Since the conversion of the mega real estate deals related to hundreds of hectares, the loss to the government has been huge. To see just one example the stamp duty actually paid by the branch of the Lodha family for land owned by Vishwajit Rane involved over five lakh sq meters. The stamp duty was assessed to the old rate of Rs100 per sq meter instead of the new index rate of Rs 10,000 per sq meter.
This is a loss and other deals of such gross under-assessment of stamp duty have resulted in a reported loss of over Rs100 crore to the government of Goa. Which in effect means over a R100 crore of your money and my money has been gifted to the builders and to Vishwajit Rane who sold the property to a member of the Lodha family.

LOWER STAMP DUTY
THE Goa Bench of the Bombay high court has struck down the sale deeds which have availed stamp duty to the extent of crores of rupees. Indeed, the high court has ordered the full recovery of the stamp duty and has directed action against officials who charged the lower stamp duty. It may be noted that though Abhinandan Lodha has issued a full-page advertisement in The Navhind Times, claiming that the group does not have any project in Goa, the truth is that a breakaway branch of the family is very much involved in the Bicholim real estate scam.
Besides the wholesale demolition of the TCP Act the Pramod Sawant government has also been accused of permitting large-scale illegal construction in violation of the CRZ rules. The Goa Bench of the Bombay High Court has ordered the demolition of hundreds of illegal structures in the coastal villages both in north and south Goa. It may be recalled that a large number of illegal structures, including commercial buildings, were ordered to be demolished in Anjuna, Vagator, Candolim and Morjim. More recently the high court ordered the immediate demolition of over a 100 illegal commercial structures at Agonda, which is a major Olive Ridley turtle sanctuary.
THERE has also been a lot of illegal construction within the heritage zones such as the world heritage complex at Old Goa. Under the pretence of development amenities for pilgrims, the government has permitted the setting up of a shopping mall within a 100 meters of the heritage site. The members of the Save Old Goa Action Committee on an inspection of the site discovered the presence of canon balls at the excavated site.
Apparently, there is large-scale excavation going on at the Church of St Agustine in the recent past. Ironically, a former TCP minister, Pandurang Madkaikar, has built a huge mansion within less than a 100 meters of the World Heritage Bom Jesus Basilica.
The large-scale instruction of forest cover and the rack-less uprooting of trees has made Goa susceptible to wildfires. According to a study in the Journal of Environmental Management, merely 40% of Goa’s forest cover falls under the very highly vulnerable category for wildfire risks. This is because a lot of land within the forest areas has been allowed to be converted into settlement and commercial complexes between 2017 and 2023.
It has been found that 521 hectares of forest land have been affected by major fires. Forest fires can be deadly as dramatised by recent forest fires in California which even affected major Hollywood homes.

CONCRETE JUNGLES
MANOHAR Parrikar paid the price for a loving Babush Monserrate to draw up the RP 2011 which marked the beginning of the destruction of green Goa. Paddy fields in Taleigao and Caranzalem are giving way to huge concrete high rises cheek by jowl. It may be recalled that Parrikar took the help of Babush Monserrate to sustain the minority BJP government in 2002.
However, the backlash over RP 2011 brought down the Parrikar government. Similarly, the TCP scandals of Vishwajit Rane will bring down the Pramod Sawant government. The BJP high command should go into damage control if it wants to retain Goa.