Church, Govt on collision course on re-introduction of controversial land plan

The Goa Government’s decision to re-introduce a controversial land use plan and set up of a string of planning and development authorities, has brought the influential Goa Church in a face-to-face confrontation with ruling alliance party Goa Forward, whose president Vijai Sardesai holds the Town and Country Planning portfolio.

The Goa Church this week intensified the agitation by using the Sunday mass and other forums to invite lay Catholics and other citizenry to a public meeting on April 27 in South Goa’s Margao town, in order to make a statement against the decisions of the Town and Country Planning ministry, which organisers of the event claim, are expected to open vast tracts of undeveloped land, including fields, open areas, orchard plots to settlement zones.

The tug-of-war between the Goa Church and the ruling political leadership had got even more murky in recent times, with a chain of videos, singling out the Church and criticising the influential religious body for its overt “political activism”, going on viral on social media in the state, which has a 26 per cent Catholic population.

While top Church officials have not gone on record on the issue, parish priests across the state in their sermons, exhorted lay Catholics and “those who love Goa” to attend the rally against the proposed land laws and land conversion bodies like the Planning and Development Authorities, several of which are already in place.

“We have only made an open appeal to the people who are concerned about Goa to turn up at the rally which is being organised by civil society members under the banner of ‘Goencho Awaaz’. The Church is not backing the organisation of the rally,” a top official attached to the Goa Archbishop’s office told The Pioneer.

 Backers of the public meet have also said, that a list of politicians who have illegally converted land in the Regional Plan 2021, will also be made public at the meeting. The Regional Plan 2021 is the Town and Country Planning ministry’s visionary document, which is aimed at rationalising use of land in India’s smallest state, which is already facing a land crunch for infrastructure as well as housing projects, with real estate prices shooting through the roof.

Sardesai, whose party won three seats in the 2017 assembly polls largely with the backing of the Catholic community in the State, and is now in the hot seat initially claimed that the Church-backed public movement was in fact aimed at destabilising the government.

But on Wednesday, he toned down his comments, even promising the organisers of the meeting that he would act against the politicians mentioned in the list, if the list were shared with him before the meeting is held.

“I am waiting for the list in anticipation. If this list is given to me before the meeting, then we will take action. My doors are open. If you give me the list before the meeting. The land which has been illegally converted, we will convert to orchard of green,” Sardesai said.

Even as the push and pull between ruling alliance party leaders and the Goa Church got more vigorous, a series of videos emerged on the social media over the last two days, attacking the Church for being an impediment to progress in Goa and opposing infrastructure projects just for the heck of it.

The videos circulated anonymously also accuses the Goa Church of indulging in political activism and trying to divide society.

Reacting to the viral videos, the Aam Aadmi Party in Goa on Wednesday filed a police complaint against unknown persons claiming the videos were aimed at creating communal disharmony in Goa.

“The videos are a criminal act meant to incite hatred and communal passions and promote enmity between communities and to disturb peaceful fabric of Goa,” AAP leader Valmiki Naik has said in the complaint filed before the Panaji police station. The complaint also demands that the police track down the source of the videos and book the offenders.