The Hindu : National : Goa villagers up in arms against housing project

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Goa villagers up in arms against housing project

Prakash Kamat

Aldona Bachao Abhiyan fighting to prevent urbanisation of village

PANAJI: Residents of Aldona, a sleepy village of north Goa, are up in arms against a proposed mega housing project.

The Aldona Bachao Abhiyan (ABA), a core group formed by the villagers, is gearing for a struggle armed with a fresh government notification on March 13 on the role of the ward development committees, village panchayats, gram sabhas and the zilla panchayats in the planning process.

Renowned writer and ABA spokesperson Maria Aurora Couto said on Sunday that the Abhiyan had asked the Aldona panchayat to instruct promoters of the housing project to stop the work, pending grant of permission by the Chief Town Planner as required under the Town and Country Planning Act, 1974.

The ABA is in the process of addressing a petition to the Chief Town Planner requesting him not to issue any licence under Section 17-A of the TCP Act.

Ms. Couto said the petition would be signed by the locals who would like to see development that would be beneficial to all present residents and not solely to the prospective new entrants in the housing colonies.

Simultaneously, the ABA had taken recourse to the Right to Information Act to get to the root of the issue at the village panchayat level.

Help sought

Ms. Couto said the request for assistance was coming in from neighbouring villages, which were also besieged by the “development projects.” It had been decided that each village would deal with the issues locally but information would be shared among such groups. The ABA had also sought the support of the Goa Bachao Abhiyan, which had successfully agitated against the controversial Goa State Regional Plan.

“Breach of law”

The ABA had pointed out to yet another serious issue wherein tenanted Communidade land (land belonging to the age-old village land communes) was being sold by the tenants in connivance with the members of the Communidades. In the light of the Agricultural Tenancy Act, no tenanted agricultural field could be converted for non-agricultural purpose such as housing. The ABA had called upon the authorities to prevent the breach of law while granting construction licences.

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