the goan I network
PANAJI
Town and Country Planning Minister Vijai Sardesai who earlier this week decided to bring the ‘suspended’ Regional Plan 2021 back into force with respect to its settlement areas, has said that the decision was taken in order to release areas marked as ‘settlement’ in the plan.
However, the extent of what part of the Regional Plan will be in force is still unclear. Questions also remain whether the Regional Plan 2001, now a dead document and which has been completely replaced by Regional Plan 2021, will also be ‘resurrected’.
Sardesai’s announcement that he will consider an amendment to TCP Act in order to allow those settlement areas which are marked in the RP2001 but not in the 2021 plan indicates that his ultimate plan was to ensure that both the settlements zones are considered as ‘settlement’ for the purpose of development and that for a development permit to be processed it would need to be marked as ‘settlement’ in either one plan.
“The issue about land which has been classified as ‘settlement’ and which has been omitted from the settlement zone in Regional Plan 2021 will be addressed shortly by amending the TCP Act to enable rectification or minor changes in the Regional Plan in the next session of the Assembly,” Sardesai had said on Thursday.
Prior to this, a plan would be processed only if it was marked in both not either or. Such a move would bring a huge number of areas into settlement zones.
Sardesai had earlier said that it was no longer feasible to go ahead with his much touted, Transfer of Development Rights policy, on account of several changes in the real estate sector including the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax the Real Estate Regulatory Authority which has thrown the industry in uncertainty.
Sardesai’s final announcement could raise eyebrows as it raises the possibility of unbridled discretion in the hands of politicians and officials of TCP Department which could once again lead to haphazard development, which Sardesai himself has said he was against.
The Regional Plan 2021 was kept in abeyance by Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar who repeatedly promised that he and his government would draft a new Regional Plan claiming that the previous one drafted by the Congress was bad. However, Parrikar never got down to drafting a new Regional Plan even six years after he promised that it would be done, leaving the state in the state of limbo.
