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The famed natural beauty of Goa may soon become a rarity. In the pursuit of development, orchards and agricultural fields are being sacrificed, and forests on private lands are being exploited, portraying a battleground where the environment is losing against the real estate boom. On similar lines, in a concerning development, Goa’s town and country planning (TCP) department's shift to a zoning plan for each taluka has facilitated the conversion of Goa's green cover for luxury projects.
The demand for real estate in Pernem is primarily fuelled by the Manohar International Airport at Mopa, attracting investments from major cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Punjab. The real estate advisory firm, 360 Realtors, anticipates a 25-30% increase in property prices in North Goa and the nearby Konkan region annually due to this development.
The draft zoning plan for 2023 reveals a systematic assault on Goa's fragile green cover, with regulations being side lined to facilitate the construction of hotels and luxury villas.
Pernem is the first of the 12 talukas where zoning planning starts. In Pernem, the impact is stark – of the total 25.2 crore sqm area, the TCP department's GIS-backed zoning planning extracts 1.4 crore sqm from the preserved green cover for construction activities, a significant 21% reduction from what the Regional Plan 2021 had safeguarded.
The draft zoning plan has also drastically cut down agricultural and orchard lands in Pernem town, reducing them to a mere 15% of the previously designated area. This reduction, an alarming 80%, starkly contrasts the Regional Plan 2021's representation of 1.3 crore sqm of agricultural and orchard lands.
Despite protests from locals in Pernem against the substantial land conversion driven by external builders and property owners, the TCP minister, Vishwajit Rane, seems resolute in the shift from a new Regional Plan to relying on zoning plans for each taluka. The zoning process, supposedly assisted by consultants, is criticized for being driven more by individual requests than a comprehensive regional planning approach.
This onslaught on Goa's verdant hills and fields follows the controversial Section 17 (2) introduced by Rane in the Goa Town and Country Planning Act, 1974, granting unbridled powers to rectify any "inadvertent error" in the regional plan, a move currently contested in the Bombay High Court at Goa. The increase in settlement and commercial areas under Pernem municipality to 52% from the previous 16% exemplifies the unbridled conversion of land for construction.
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