One down, two to go

Section 17(2) of Goa's TCP Act has been 'read down' not quashed, but HC's crucial observations will hold good in battles that lie ahead

Mar 16, 2025

Hi folks,

Welcome to yet another edition of Gerard’s Gazette, a weekly newsletter, in which I attempt to break down the events of the week gone by, offer a bit of context, as well as a dose of news behind the news.

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So, here we are, after what has been a positive week from the ‘Save Goa’ point of view. While there may be many things that have happened this past week, there’s just one I want to talk about.

As you may have heard, the Bombay High Court at Goa, in an order delivered this week, struck down the Goa Town and Country Planning (Alteration/Modification in the Regional Plan for Rectification of Inconsistent/Inadvertent Zoning Proposals) Rules, 2023, and guidelines, as well as read down the parent provision—section 17(2) of the Goa Town and Country Planning Act.

So what does this actually mean for Goa?

If you don’t want to read the whole piece, here’s a TL;DR explanation for you.

The court’s order is a vindication. It’s a vindication for all those who called out Goa’s Town and Country Planning Minister Vishwajit Rane for the piecemeal, case-by-case changes he was effecting to the Regional Plan. The High Court has endorsed the view held by many, that this was an exercise “not in furtherance of a development in public interest by maintaining a balance between sustainable development viz-a-viz the environmental issues, but is concerned with the interest of private landowners.”

This is a moral victory, no doubt. Section17(2) is (almost) dead, and the conversions granted will likely follow suit. But the men behind it are still alive, and so the fight must go on.

Two things stand out. The High Court has upheld the Regional Plan 2021 as a document that needs to be read holistically and has frowed upon piecemeal changes. And secondly, it has held that “private interest stands subordinated to the public good.” Both these findings will go a long way in defending our idea of Goa in the battles that lie ahead.

How we got here

(If you are already familiar with the RP’s history, you can skip this part or simply read a shorter version here.)

Goa has something called the Goa Town and Country Planning Act, a law that was enacted in 1974 with the aim of facilitating organised development and land use. The TCP Act, among other things, mandates the creation of a Regional Plan (RP)—a broad-based document that provides a long-term vision and a related spatial perspective (through a structural plan or its equivalent) for integrated investments that ensures an ecologically acceptable environment.

As noted by the High Court, Goa was the first state of the Union to have an RP that covered the whole state.

The first Regional Plan RP 2001 was operative for the period 1986 to 2001 (RP-2001). RP-2001 was formulated as a first exercise of its kind in India at a time when Goa was transitioning from a Union Territory (with full Central financial support) to a State (with partnership central financial support).

The second regional plan in the state was to be the RP 2011, which was being draughted between 2005 and 2007, after the fall of the Parrikar government in 2005, when Pratapsingh Rane was the chief minister and Atanasio “Babush” Monserrate was the Town and Country Planning Minister.

Following a huge public outcry and people’s movement led by the Goa Bachao Abhiyan, which successfully demanded the scrapping of the RP 2011 on account of it being a plan that was practically drawn up as if a child with a box of crayons was ‘colouring’ zones in the state. [Which is what it was. If you want to know who the ‘child’ in question back then was, contact me personally. That brought us Regional Plan 2021, a plan that was drawn up by a state-level task force with a mandate “to prepare a broad-based RP for the prospective horizon year 2021 to create a more vibrant and prosperous Goa so that Goans, especially the young, feel confident they have a future here.”

Which brings us to today. The RP2021 is the officially notified and valid plan in the state as on date encompassing the entirety of the State of Goa, as the entire area is regarded as a singular region.

The good part of this plan, possibly the best feature, is its demarcation of eco zones classified as eco I and eco II. Eco I, which makes up a total of 54.06% of the state’s area, consists of forests (wildlife sanctuaries, national parks, reserved and private forests), which is 35.53%; mangroves, 1.22%; water bodies, 5.32%; khazan lands and paddy fields, 11.66%; no development slopes; and CRZ I areas.

Eco II consists of 26.29% of the state comprising orchards (27.77%), cultivable lands (other than paddy fields) (3.32%), salt pans, fish farms, mud flats, etc., making up 0.2%, and CRZ II areas.

Thus, over 80% of land is under eco-protection and regulated development. Settlement zone (where private, non-industrial construction is allowed), accounting for approximately 20% of the area of the State of Goa, largely forms a part of the coastal belt of the State, interwoven with wetlands, lowlands, tidal marshes, cultivated paddy fields, intertidal beaches, etc., which form a part of the coastal ecosystem in Goa.

The present problem

On March 1, 2023, the Goa Government notified the Goa Town and Country Planning (Amendment) Act, 2023, introducing Section 17, sub-section (2), to the scheme of the TCP Act with effect from 02.03.2023, enabling re-zoning of individual plots in RP-2021 purportedly on grounds that there were “inadvertent errors” or due to “inconsistent/incoherent zoning proposals” in the notified RP.

Long story short, section 17(2) was nothing but a method to “mutilate” (in the words of the High Court) the regional plan and allow individual property owners, especially those whose lands were marked as either Eco I or Eco II, to change the zoning and have them marked as ‘settlement.’.

As the high court noted, as of 02.01.2025, there have been 353 approvals under Section 17(2), which affects an area of about 26.54 lakh square meters of land, of which “almost all the conversions are from paddy fields, natural cover, no development zone, and orchard to settlement zones.”

“This may be a minuscule percentage as contended by the State, but the applications are being filed, entertained, and conversions granted for which there is no outer limit… Such plot-by-plot conversion, creating a zone within a zone, virtually has the effect of mutilating the RP prepared after such an elaborate exercise,” the High Court also said.

Calling them ‘errors’ in the Regional Plan was just a ruse when the real plan was to get hold of powers of making unilateral, discretionary, and arbitrary changes to the plan based on who wants what and who is willing to pay (the conversion fees).

“Tinkering with the RP in a manner not known to law or by following a procedure carved out bypassing the mandate of the Act can have disastrous consequences,” the High Court said, noting that the rules and the parent provision gave “unfettered and unguided authority to the Executive to interpret what is meant by an inadvertent error or what is an inconsistent/incoherent zoning proposal.”

As a consequence, entire hills in villages like Morjim, Mandrem, and Chopdem were en masse ‘converted’ into settlement from the earlier zoning of either ‘natural cover, orchard, or no development slope.

In Chopdem village, for example, 3.86 lakh square meters of land were ‘converted’ to settlement. Prior to that, the entire settlement of Chopdem village was only 2.85 lakh square meters. In neighbouring Morjim, on a single day, 62,275 sq. meters of land was turned into ‘settlement’ via seven separate notifications.

As the High Court noted, “almost all the conversions are from paddy fields, natural cover, no development zone, and orchard to settlement zones.”

In an earlier piece that you can read here, I highlighted the nature of the changes being wrought upon Goa and their potential consequences.

Analysis of the Court’s order

Now, many will argue that the Court failing to quash Section 17(2) as was sought by the petitioners as being unconstitutional and violative of Article 14 (right to equality) and Article 21 (right to life) of the constitution isn’t exactly the victory they were hoping for.

While that may be true, my view is slightly different. For a court to set aside a law duly passed by the state legislative assembly requires a high threshold. Courts are generally wary of doing something that could be seen as stepping into the shoes of the legislative branch of government.

Besides, striking it down outright would give ammunition to the government in an appeal to the Supreme Court, where a bench unsympathetic to Goa’s character and environment might agree to the claim that the High Court had indeed stepped into the shoes of the legislative branch.

It’s for this reason that the Court believed that it should, “before annulling it, attempt to read it down, that is, to narrow its scope by interpretation so that it may be valid.”

And therefore, the High Court said that the expression “inconsistent or incoherent zoning proposals” can only mean a proposal being inconsistent with another proposal forming part of the RP or with the comprehensive plan or incoherent in the context of the comprehensive plan. “It cannot imply placing a land parcel within the zone for which an exception can be made,” the High Court said.

As per the order, the amended section now has to be read as 'inconsistency or incoherence of a zoning proposal with respect to another proposal in the RP, or with respect to the Outline Development Plan’; it would in no case imply a change of zone of a land parcel having regard to its peculiar facts.”

The problem is this too will be interpreted the way the government (executive branch) wants to interpret it. In effect, the department will keep its shop open and continue to accept applications for change of zone, but this time making sure they go an extra mile to justify the change of zone.

Of all the sections that were brought in to allow case-by-case changes to the Regional Plan—16B, 17(2), and 39A—17(2) was the least justifiable legally.

In fact, one can argue that Rane himself realised that section 17(2) was on a weak legal footing, which prompted him to introduce section 39A, which basically achieves the same thing, the only difference being that it allows for a period of suggestions and objections. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise that justifying changes on the basis of errors, when there is no apparent error, is not always going to stand the test of judicial scrutiny.

What’s going to happen next?

Now that the High Court has struck down the rules and read down section 17(2), for all intents and purposes it means that no fresh conversions can be issued under the above provision. According to the Goa Foundation, this also means that with the rules rescinded, all permissions granted under the said rules also consequently fall. But given that the High Court is yet to fully dispose of the petition, we could yet hear the last word on this.

Town and Country Planning Minister Vishwajit Rane called for a press conference on the same day the verdict was delivered and announced he would be approaching the Supreme Court against the order. He told the media that he had “already moved a note” and even dropped the name of Adv Mukul Rohatgi, who will presumably represent the state in the appeal.

On Saturday night, Rane called for another press conference at 10:30pm in which he claimed that since the High Court has upheld section 17(2) of the Act, he will call for a meeting of the TCP Board and ‘tweak’ the rules according to the High Court directives.

He wouldn’t be appealing in the Supreme Court was the message. He also claimed he was “happy” with the High Court’s order.

Makes you doubt whether he actually moved a note as he claimed he did at the previous press conference.

The real battle, then, lies ahead. Like it always does. No one expected that the powers that be would give up and walk away. They’ve been gnawing away at Goa at least since 2005, and two decades on, they are still trying, increasingly hopeful of success. If not 17(2), they’ll use 39(A), and if that fails, they’ll fall back on 16(B).

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GERARD’s Gazette