Hill cutting: Deception, deflection, denials
A deep dive into what constitutes hill cutting, what the government and opposition have been saying (and not saying) and why we make such a fuss about it.
The festive season is upon us, and at the outset, let me take a moment to wish you all a very happy Ganesh festival, a season of togetherness and of celebrating familial bonds. If there’s one thing that I wish for each of us, that we strive to maintain and rebuild the sense of community that has gotten us so far. A very happy Ganesh Chaturthi to all celebrating!
As always, it’s been an eventful week, with political parties slugging it out over the release of long-pending social security dues, the government’s insistence that it would leave no one behind, and FC Goa’s triumphant start to the current football season by winning the relaunched Bandodkar trophy.
But there’s one issue that has refused to die down. And for good reason.
Hill cutting: Deception, deflection, denials
Town and Country Planning Minister Vishwajit Rane was in the news again this week, this time after (yet again) addressing a press conference to now say that the permissions for two controversial projects -- DLF at Verem-Reis Magos and Bhutani at Sancoale -- will be reviewed as well as to reiterate what he’s been saying for a few days now -- that the TCP Department has not given any hill cutting permissions in the last six months. Hill cutting is a sensitive issue given how much of ‘no development slopes’ have been converted for settlement over the last year and a half.
Given that he’s spent so much time insisting that his department has not given any permission for hill cutting, let’s spend some time of our own trying to understand what he’s really trying to say and what he’s deliberately keeping unsaid.
What is hill cutting?
Goa’s Town and Country Planning Act makes it an offence “to undertake the work of cutting any “hilly or sloppy land” without obtaining the prior written permission from the Chief Town Planner.” A hilly or “sloppy” land, as they call it (I think what they mean is sloping or sloped), is defined as “any land having a gradient of 1:10 or more.”
Further, there’s the Goa Land Development and Building Construction Regulations, 2010 clause 4.10 of which deals with “regulations regarding development on sloping sites.”
Subclause (e) of the said section states that “No development shall be permitted if the gradient exceeds 1:4.” Which ideally means that any slope that has a gradient greater than 1:4 is essentially outside the purview of development and is a ‘no development slope’.
Taken together, what these two sections mean is this: If you want to even drive a spade into the ground on a plot that has even a mild slope (anything more than a gradient of 1:10), you are going to need a special permission from the Chief Town Planner (Planning), over and above the other licences like construction licence, technical clearance from the TCP, etc.
Further, if your plot of land has a gradient of 1:4 or greater, no applications for construction will be entertained, and for all intents and purposes, it is a “no development slope” and out of the purview of development. At least that’s what the law says.
How then are constructions coming up on hills that clearly appear to be steeper than 1:4 gradient? Why isn’t anyone, especially Rane, who said he would enhance the fine for hill cutting to Rs one crore doing anything about it?
The answer lies in what Rane actually means when he says his department hasn’t given any permissions for hill cutting. What Rane is trying to do, in a roundabout way, is to pass the buck to the chief minister and his camp (read as Revenue Minister Atanasio “Babush” Monserrate) challenging him to take action against this “hill cutting.”
After all, it was the Chief Minister, flanked by Revenue Minister Atanasio Monserrate, who recently announced a new set of measures to prevent Goa from becoming the next Wayanad and that the talathis would be made responsible for reporting and acting against illegal hill cutting in the state. Rane took this as a personal affront, and this is his way of striking back.
But that’s not the whole story: The law that is being flouted is the Goa Land Development and Building Construction Regulations, 2010—a law that the TCP department has to enforce and not the Revenue or Disaster Management Departments.
Why then is Rane not doing anything about it? And more than that…
How are such constructions being approved in the first place?
I’m not claiming I have the answer, but a clue to where the answer is might lie in subclause (f) of the same Goa Land Development and Building Construction Regulations, 2010, which states that a “Chartered Surveyor or Civil Engineer shall certify the contour plans and shall be responsible for the accuracy of the said plan.”
What this means is that every application for a technical clearance submitted to the TCP is accompanied by a “certificate” issued by a chartered surveyor or chartered civil engineer stating that the plans drawn up and submitted are in conformity with existing regulation.
The Town and Country Planning Department has neither the mechanism nor the intention to cross-verify the accuracy of the contour plans submitted by developers. It quite literally processes the applications “blindly.”
Which means that all that the developers need to do is submit what is, for all intents and purposes, a “self declaration” that the land is not falling within a no development slope, and lo and behold, the permission is granted. Sure, not every submitted application is devious, but if you are wondering how the controversial ones are getting permission, therein might lie the answer.
And unless anyone meticulously compares actual contour drawings with the plans submitted and approved by the Town and Country Planning Department to prove the falsification on a case-by-case basis, this one will remain difficult to crack.
DLF & Bhutani
Which brings us to the two most contentious projects currently under the scanner in the wake of rising protests against them and allegations of hill cutting.
In the case of the Verem-Reis Magos DLF hill cutting, Rane said that permissions were given earlier—the conversion sanad was granted in 1994, the change of zone was done in Regional Plan 2001, the revised approval was granted in 2008, and then again in2019, etc.—and that he hasn’t given any hill cutting permissions over the last six months.
In effect, what he’s saying is, “It wasn’t me.” Which implies two things. One that something wrong has taken/is taking place. And secondly, he’s not going to do anything about it, because, well, when a (previous) government has given permission for a project, it has to be honoured, investment sentiment, and all that.
But what Rane also doesn’t say is this: the Regional Plan 2021, which superseded the RP 2001, shows parts of Survey No. 87 (where the DLF Project is being built) as a no development slope. How then is ‘development’ allowed on a ‘no development slope’? And what is he, as a Town and Country Planning Minister, doing about it?
The controversial Bhutani project, a 700-villa project styled as Bhutani Acqua Eden, coming up along the verdant and thickly-treed hillsides of the Sancoale plateau, which is being built on a similarly steep gradient and which was once marked as a private forest, takes “no hill cutting” to a whole new level. The CEO of Operations for Bhutani Infra claimed in a statement released to the media this week that they are a law-abiding company andthat they have all the permissions. Which, as we’ve seen earlier, doesn’t necessarily mean it's not illegal.
More than that, however, it reminds me of a statement made by a then promoter of Aldeia de Goa, the massive gated mega villa project at Bambolim, whose controversial construction gave birth to the GBA movement back in 2006-07. The now disgraced promoter had apparently (since I heard this anecdote from a secondary source) told Dr. Oscar Rebello, who was one of the prominent faces of the GBA movement back then: “We don’t break the law, we make the law.”
Suppression of people’s voices
This brings me to a question that you too might have grappled with as you read about all of this across the media, including social media. There are lots of individual protests, but why isn’t Goa seeing a mass movement like the GBA movement of 2007 that forced the government to scrap the Regional Plan 2011?
This is an especially pressing question, especially since the changes currently happening in Goa are a return of the very same zoning changes that led to howls of protests led by the Goa Bachao Abhiyan back then. In fact, one could argue that in terms of the sheer amount of land conversions taking place, the changes are even worse than the scrapped regional plan.
It’s not like people aren’t willing to protest now. For example, we saw last year how, when people came out in large numbers to protest the Pernem zoning plan—in part because the protests had the blessings of the local MLA, Jit Arolkar—the government was forced to scrap the plans.
Things are different now than they were in the past. For one, the opposition is much weaker than the opposition BJP, which had 16 members between 2007 and 2013. Further, the then-Congress government was Salcete heavy, which meant within the cabinet, ministers were more vulnerable to public pressure and had less of a steamrolling attitude.
But more than any of the above, there’s another sinister reason why protests aren’t growing like many hoped they would. The answer to that is found in a Goa Bachao Abhiyan press release dated May 5 this year:
“At Old Goa, the Secretary of Panchayat, under pressure from the government, tried to withdraw permissions at the last minute. In Margao, Lohia Maidan was denied [at the] last minute after blocking the venue for GBA, citing 'electrical work' of which none was seen.
After booking Adarsh Hall, threats of sealing them forced the board to retract the permissions on the morning of the gathering.
At Arambol, threats were issued by the police to a hapless elderly nun, stating arrest if the meeting takes place in the neighbouring hall, despite the convent having nothing to do with organising the same! Demands were made for 'Sound Permissions' despite it not being a requirement for an indoor venue, and countless calls were made asking for a shutdown of the meeting even while it was happening.
All this is no accident. The media’s voice too is more subdued. 🙂
Here’s what you can do…
Activist groups including Swapnesh Sherlekar and team and others have set up a help desk for those wishing to register their objections against this. All you need to do is send an email to ipsavegoa@gmail.com, and they will help you draft a 'suggestion’ to be sent to the department. Hoping many of you will register your dissent.
Chief Secretary in a pickle
Goa’s Chief Secretary has found himself in a pickle this week. All thanks primarily to activist Swapnesh Sherlekar, who exposed the former’s purchase of a river view bungalow in the Panarim vaddo of Aldona for the on-paper price of Rs 2.60 crore. What’s especially ‘curious’ about his bungalow is that though it was built sometimes in the year 2016, on the land records the plot was a “paddy field” until March this year when it was converted to settlement under Section 17(2) of the TCP Act just two months before the Chief Secretary could buy it. What’s more, the Chief Secretary signed off on the file approving the conversion and then proceeded to buy it.
The Congress too took up the issue and besieged the state secretariat—that move that helped draw attention to the issue—put the government on the back foot. After all, if the state’s topmost bureaucrat and head of administration is signing off on files that will benefit him personally, that’s a clear conflict of interest at the very least.
A chase that ended badly
Sunday brought bad news to two families from Gujarat. A couple, both aged 22, the man, a businessman from Bharuch, Gujarat, and the girl, a student at the Goa Institute of Management, also from Gujarat, drove straight into the Cumbarjua River at St. Estevam after allegedly being chased by an unidentified sedan following a minor bust up at Khandola.
While the woman swam to safety, the man, who was driving the car, is yet to be found seven days later. It was not until Saturday that the police were able to narrow down on the chasing Etios car and called the duo driving it for questioning and an FIR is registered against them.
This has sparked a host of conspiracy theories ranging from murder by drowning to intentional disappearance. Needless to say, these are just theories and so far the statements given by the survivor have checked out. As such it is improper to speculate, especially since a family is down in the state attempting to trace what happened to their son and brother. They deserve that much, at least until they can find some closure.
That’s about it for this week. I hope you enjoy reading the weekly roundup as much as I do writing it. And if there’s one way you can definitely help, it’s by helping spread the word. If there are issues that you would like broken down or questions answered, do write them, and I will try and answer them in future editions of the newsletter. Until next week then, tchau!
Hi i sent through a message to the email in your article I was asked to write a simple mail to TCP taluka office. So not certain about the next step.
Would like to write a Stronf mail to the CORRUPT Broker who is the TCP Minister & His Team who lives On Public illicit Funds