Goemkarponn desk
PANAJI: A division bench of the Bombay High Court comprising Justices M.S. Karnik and Justice Valmiki Menezes — presently hearing PIL challenging section 17(2) of the TCP Act, 1974 — has issued notice on a fresh PIL challenging the vires and rules of Section 39A of the same Act.
The matter is posted for interim relief on October 3, 2024.
New section 39A of the Goa Town and Country Planning Act, which went into force on 22.02.2024, seeks to allow once again entirely ad-hoc and arbitrary conversions of privately owned plots in the Regional Plan and notified Outline Development Plans (ODPs) based on individual applications from such parties (“spot zoning”).
The Petitioner claimed that the Rules under the Act for section 39A came into force on 7.3.2024. Such provisions are contrary to the very scheme of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1974 and are also violative of Article 14 and Article 21 of the Constitution of India. Both section 39A and the rules have been challenged.
The new feature of section 39A — when compared to 16B and 17(2) – is that the government has now given itself the powers to interfere openly in the permissions for plots lying within Planning Areas governed by Outline Development Plans.
“Thus, the government has now given itself the power to change land use not only in the Regional Plan but also in notified planning areas, which now includes every nook and corner of the state. This can only bore ill for the future of the state, since every planned area is now subject to arbitrary influence, especially from interested parties including real estate bodies and developers,” said Claude Alvares
In the meanwhile, more than 6,000 applications for changes in the Regional Plan under section 16B have become infructuous, since 16B itself has been removed from the TCP Act due to the PIL challenging it in the High Court. The cancellation of 16B was notified on the same day that section 39A was brought into force.
The new PIL has recorded that 95% of the applications under section 39A which have appeared in the gazette for public objections involve changes from the orchard (2,37,710 sq mt) and natural cover zones (1,42,462 sq mt) to settlement.
