Candola locals against inclusion of village in urban areas

Margao: The villagers of Candola panchayat up the ante against the government’s notification declaring 56 villages as urban areas, the villagers submitted on Thursday a memorandum to the panchayat objecting to the inclusion of Betki-Candola panchayat in Quepem taluka as an urban area.

The villagers also asked the panchayat to make its stand clear on the issue and call for a special gram sabha to discuss the issue. The villagers pointed out that the implications of this notification are far more sinister than just the assessment of the land, since once a village is notified as “urban area”, all other laws like TCP Act, CRZ laws, etc will come into

effect.

They further pointed out that the reclassification from rural to urban has grave implications on the economic and ecological balance of the village and the state of Goa as the “urban areas” will eventually be planned under ODPs, where the planning is with focus on commercial zones, high-rise buildings, parking spaces, etc and not on sustainable development.

Presently, the villages are planned under the Regional Plan for sustainable development and the protection of the rights of the local communities, agriculture, water and natural resources, which will no longer be the case if the village is treated as an urban area. The villagers further pointed out that entire Goa is suffering severely due to loss of critical resources and its natural beauty adding that urbanisation, mining and industrialisation has led to loss of water aquifers, forests and water recharge areas across the state.

The villagers also expressed apprehensions that the CRZ areas which are now notified as “urban areas” will be eventually classified as CRZ-II. This will mean removal of most of the restrictions which presently protect the coasts under CRZ-III. No Development Zone (NDZ) will be reduced drastically, which means more destruction of the ecologically sensitive coast while an increment in FSI will lead to reduction of green

cover.

They further added that given Goa’s special conditions under CRZ 2011, it is important that CZMPs under CRZ 2011 are first completed and the plans prepared by the local communities are honoured. The categories of CRZ zones cannot be changed without the Informed Consent of the Indigenous Communities that live on the coast.

The villagers pointed out that once the land revenue code notifies the village as “urban area”, the transition from a village panchayat to a municipality is just a matter of time, meaning the loss of grassroots democracy and governance, adding that the villages of Goa are the living communities of fishermen, forest workers and farmers. Shift to urban means not just lesser environmental protection and more construction, but also lesser livelihood security for traditional communities.