Dear Chief Minister of Goa Manohar Parrikar. Hon Sir,
Well done decision taken by your cabinet on approval policy on unauthorized religious structures based on Supreme Court directives. Thank You. Sir. I have the following questions to be taken into consideration:- 1) How will the committee assess the age of construction, since it is illegally constructed? And why it is 30 years or not less or not more? What was the criteria going for 30 years only? 2) If the decisions is taken by the Committees, are been objected whether Court will have their jurisdiction? 3) For those who are been specified as " to be demolished" whether there will be fine imposed to the party? Even if it is on private property when the structure is blocking the public road? 4) What about the illegal construction which are existing in State Govt land and Central or autonomous body land? How the notice will be served to them especially for the Central Govt unauthorized structures? 5) Structures to be shifted to a land given by the Govt, if not approved by the affected party as it may not serve their interest, what will be the Govt decision? and who will bear the expenses? 6) If certain structures still remains unattended which are not been surveyed or intentionally not listed out, whether complains will be entertained? 7) list may be endless, the cabinet should take note of all these points before any attempt is made or else it may land up into litigation or strikes. Stephen Dias, D.Paula ============================================ Policy on unauthorized religious structures TNN | Aug 15, 2013, 01.58 AM IST PANAJI: The cabinet on Wednesday approved the policy on how the state government will deal withunauthorized religious structures in public places in Goa. Under the policy, the government will constitute three committees: Taluka-level committee (TLC) headed by the respective deputy collector, district-level committee (DLC) headed by the district collector and a state-level committee (SLC) chaired by the chief minister. These committees will be notified soon. The previous government had surveyed the unauthorized religious structures in Goa and the detailed data is already available. Now, the DLC will scrutinize every structure and classify all these unauthorised religious structures into two categories; "not to be removed" (in situ regularize) and "to be removed". The second class will be further classified into "to be relocated" and "not to be relocated". The "to be relocated" class will be classified into "more than 30 years old" and "less than 30 years old". In the "not to be removed" category will be structures which do not pose a problem of public safety, road planning or right of way either to traffic or to the public and which have religious sanctity. In the "to be removed but not relocated" category will be unauthorised structures on public places, public streets, public parks, etc. which pose problems of public safety, road planning, right to way either to traffic or to the public. In the category of "to be removed and relocated" category will be structures constructed prior to construction of the road or are not having religious sanctity or which are constructed with all due permissions but are now obstructing vehicular traffic or public places. Further, structures of over 30 years will be shifted to land given by the government. Structures below 30 years will be relocated by the managing committees at their own cost. The TLC will prepare this detailed report and submit it to the DLC with its recommendations on a case-to-case basis. The TLC will scrutinize the report, agree or disagree on the recommendations and forward it to the SLC. The SLC will consider the recommendations on each case and submit a final report to the government for action. Once the government decides, action is expected to be completed within 90 days. Presently, there are a total of over 500 such unauthorized religious structures identified all over Goa. The filtering process is expected to change the number of structures to be demolished, relocated, left untouched, etc. The issue dates back to September 2009, when the Supreme Court directed all states to stop the construction of unauthorized religious structures on public places. The Goa government mobilized its revenue officials to survey and list the unauthorized religious structures in Goa. Though initially, the survey listed over 950 such structures, the structures in Communidade land were later excluded leaving only around 500 structures for consideration. The Goa government is expected to file its affidavit in this matter before the Supreme Court by the end of this month. ================================================
