That the High Court finally caught up with him is another matter. By its order dated 10^th August 2010, the High Court has directed the Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority (GCZMA) to remain present when the illegal resort put up the Gonsalves family is demolished. This time the High Court, as a matter of abundant caution, has demanded that a compliance report shall be placed before it after the demolitions are completed.

In March this year, the Colva Consumer and Civic Forum got in touch with the Goa Foundation with a strange request. The Forum informed the Foundation that the GCZMA had granted approval for regularization of a resort of nine rooms, plus wall and well which had been ordered demolished by a High Court order of 2^nd March 2000! Not only were the buildings, wall and well now regularized, the Town Planning and Panchayat authorities had also granted approvals for the same set of buildings in 2009. The matter appeared worth investigating.

Piedade Gonsalves, the mother of Snowkon Gonsalves, had been directed to demolish the illegal building (constructed on the sand dunes and in the 200 metre zone in 1993/94) after the High Court had heard two writ petitions: the first, filed by Felix Serrao, a person directly affected by the construction, sought the Court’s directions to the Sarpanch of Colva Panchayat to carry out orders for demolition issued to it by the Goa State Committee on Coastal Environment (GSCCE). The GSCCE  had, upon inquiry, declared the constructions illegal and in violation of CRZ.

The second petition was filed by Piedade Gonsalves herself. In her petition, she sought a stay of the demolition order issued by the Panchayat and directions for regularization of the impugned constructions. She claimed they were legal and outside the 200 metre HTL.

The High Court found against her and on 2^nd March 2000 ordered the Panchayat to take necessary action against the construction. The Court also directed legal costs of Felix Serrao to be reimbursed by Piedade Gonsalves.

Ms Piedade Gonsalves appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court heard the appeal and dismissed it entirely on 11^th March 2004.

In normal course, that would have been the end of the matter. The Panchayat would now have to start the process of demolition and obey the High Court’s directions without any further ado. However, in October 2003, six months before the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal, Snowkon Gonsalves –  the son of Piedade Gonsalves – now himself became the Sarpanch of Colva village. He would remain Sarpanch till January 2007 and Administrator till May 2007. Naturally he would now do everything to ensure that the order of the High Court, upheld by the apex court, which now effectively directed him to demolish his own resort was simply ignored or worse, subverted altogether.

The first step taken was to successfully get the widow of Felix Serrao to write to the Panchayat a letter in 2006 that the buildings on the affected survey number were in fact demolished and she therefore had no further grievance in the matter.

The second step was to ensure that the original survey number on which the offending building stood was changed. The original survey number on which the illegal building stood was 54/4. A false record was created with assistance from someone within the Directorate of Settlement and Land Records (DSLR)  to establish a new survey number now called 54/4-A. Apparently this is one of the easiest things to achieve nowadays. With one fell stroke, Gonsalves would now argue, when called upon to do so, that the buildings in Survey No.54/4 had been demolished by him. The regularization permission now granted to him by Town Planning and GCZMA in 2009 was for structures in Survey No.54/4-A. Mysteriously, they were also for a building, a well and a wall!

The Colva Civic Forum produced a survey plan officially issued in 1998 by the Land Survey Department. It showed the illegal construction as legal and existing. However, the same department issued another survey plan of the same plot in July 2010 which showed the same plot completely bereft of any construction. Neither did the plan issued in 2010 show any sub-division.

When the Colva Civic Forum asked for a copy of the mutation proceedings which created the new sub-division of 54/4-A under the RTI Act, it was told the “file could not be traced.”

When the Goa Foundation wrote to the GCZMA in December 2009, enclosing the High Court and Supreme Court orders, the GCZMA with alacrity withdrew its approval and issued a show cause notice. However, it did nothing against the construction on the ground, forcing the Goa Foundation to move the Court with a fresh petition in March 2010.

The Court did the best possible thing in the circumstances. It asked the Court’s Registry to produce the original writ petitions filed by Ferrao and Gonsalves. It then asked the GCZMA to identify the structure, well and wall from the photographs enclosed in those petitions and to demarcate these and the plot as per those petitions.  It refused to go into whether the impugned constructions were indeed on another survey number. It sufficed if the construction to be removed was the same as the one that was before the High Court in 2000 when it ordered demolition.

Note the time-lag for justice in this case. The constructions are put up in 1994. Notices to the Panchayat to demolish are issued by the Government in 1994-1995. The Panchayat does not demolish anything. The Court orders resumption of the demolition process in 2000. The Supreme Court orders the same in 2004. The High Court is compelled to re-order demolition in 2010, one full decade after its original order was passed. In the meanwhile, for 15 years, the owner has enjoyed the benefit of the illegal construction built in violation of CRZ and after destroying the sand dunes. And he is elected Sarpanch of Colva.

If this is the quality of governance available in our Panchayats, God knows into which gutter Goa has finally descended. Our Chief Minister claims we are as developed as Singapore. Try destroying a beach or a sane dune or erecting an illegal construction or even throwing a piece of paper on a road in Singapore. Why, try behaving with the High Court and the Supreme Court the way Gonsalves did for over 10 years in any other part of the world, particularly the US or the United Kingdom. The latter sent best-selling author and Member of Parliament Jeffrey Archer to jail for five years because he had perjured himself in Court.

Snowkon Gonsalves nearly got away but for the actions of the Colva Civic Forum. Goa needs these civic groups and their heroic work now more than ever. We cannot remain in a permanent state of wrong-doing by officialdom. Only people power will right this situation. Courts are always ready to help, but they cannot do much without the assistance of smart and alert groups like the Forum. The Gonsalves case is clear demonstration of that little wisdom.

(Full text of the High Court order dated 10 August 2010 in the Snowkon case can be downloaded from the High Court’s website under Writ Petition No.236/2010 under Farad orders.)

Among the major projects which are violating existing norms of steep slopes and forested stretches are the River Valley Project of DLF (Delhi) which began with 580 units but has now expanded to 700 units plus club house and 35 guest rooms. In the adjoining village of Sancoale is M Tech Developers, also Delhi based, putting up another 500 unit luxury housing scheme on similar terrain.

On the beaches, more Delhi owned proposals are coming up. These include a five star by Competent Automobiles, New Delhi, at Cansaulim, Mahaseer Resort at Mandrem, Pednem. In the former, destruction of sand dunes is involved. In the latter, the proposal is in front of a turtle nesting site.

None of the mega housing projects are designed to cater to local housing needs. They can’t due to the high costs involved. DLF is selling each unit for Rs.54 lakh (over the table). If each unit is worth Rs.1 crore (what with unofficial payments also demanded), this becomes a Rs.700 crore project, being sold on the natural attractions of Goa conserved and protected lovingly by Goans for centuries. The ironic thing is the natural assets must be permanently destroyed to make way for such speculative housing. Goa cannot stand this ever expanding, ever deepening pillage.

All this is happening under a Congress-led regime both at the State and Centre.

The blog format will enable us now to post regular matters as soon as they need to go into the public domain. This will include media statements, High and Supreme Court orders and judgements in Goa Foundation public interest petitions, reports on our involvement with the garbage problem Goa faces and information secured under the Right to Information Act.

We do not claim to be a one-stop window on the environmental issues Goa faces. There are several other groups also doing yeoman’s work in this regard. But you will be able to access information on Goa’s environment that you can never get elsewhere. Enjoy, weep, laugh, but in all situations, if you are able and capable, drop by to help. If things carry on as they are at the moment, Goa as we know it will become extinct in the next ten years.

Claude Alvares
Director