Bhumiputra bill is unjustifiable on ethnic and legal grounds
THE passage of the Goa Bhumiputra Adhikarini bill, 2021 has kicked off a storm in the state with serious questions being raised over the motive of enacting it. The enactment aims at giving ownership rights to the self-occupied dweller of a small housing unit with the stated purpose of helping him to ‘live with dignity and self-respect’ and exercise his right over the property. The law was passed without any discussion as the opposition members walked out of the Assembly protesting the government decision to hurry through twenty bills in the curtailed monsoon session. The very title of the law seems to be inappropriate. Bhumiputra means a son of the soil, that is someone who is a native of Goa. But under the new law, a Bhumiputra is one who has been residing in Goa for at least 30 years. He can apply under Section 5 of the law for regularization of his dwelling for a fee. The enactment has triggered a huge controversy because it is seen as a move to legitimize the illegalities of occupants of houses with just 30 years of residential proof.
It is quite reasonable for critics to raise questions over the government motive behind the enactment of the law when elections to the state Assembly are some months away. It appears that the ruling party is using all means at its disposal to woo voters among migrants or those who have committed irregularities in constructing houses ahead of elections. It is worth recalling that the Goa Bhumiputra Adhikarini bill is not the first bill that has been brought in by the government to regularize illegal constructions and appropriation of encroachment on government and comunidade land. The Goa, Daman and Diu Mundkars (Protection from Eviction) Act, 1975 was passed to give rights to mundkars. A law was also passed in 1964 to protect the rights of the tenants. The late chief minister Manohar Parrikar had amended Goa Legislative Diploma No. 2070 way back in 2000 to give ownership rights to people who had built houses on comunidade land. The Assembly had also passed Goa Regularisation of the Unauthorised Construction Act in 2016 for granting ownership rights on structures built on private lands. Thousands of applications made by the people under these laws are still pending disposal before the government.
The new enactment is powered more by a political motive than a humanitarian motive. The ruling party obviously aims to derive political mileage out of the law. In a hurry they seem to have opened a can of worms. If the new enactment is to be implemented, several other laws would come in conflict with it. For instance, the new law will render infructuous all the official orders for demolition of illegal structures built with encroachment on government and comunidade land. What was the purpose of enacting the legislation in such a hurry? The government could have settled the cases under the provisions of the earlier laws and proven its good intent about judging the claims for authorization on reasonable grounds. Several laws have been passed to deal with encroachments and illegal constructions but the solution has been missing because of government inaction. The new enactment is likely to encourage encroachment of comunidade and government land. There is every possibility that land grabbers with the connivance of politicians used the six-month intervening period to grab land and build houses on it and apply for regularization by concocting documents.
The government is trying to dilute the meaning of Bhumiputra and ‘Mool Goenkar’ by giving rights to anyone who has been residing in Goa for 30 years. What prevented the government from settling the cases under the previous laws? It is a known fact that thousands of illegal constructions have come up in different parts of the state with the connivance of politicians. For reasons best known to them, they were neither regularised nor razed. Politicians in power have no right to give away comunidade and government land to people who have encroached upon it and built houses without any official approval. This is not a housing policy. This is a policy to legitimize encroachments. The government’s job is to end illegalities, not sanctify them.