Withdrawal of urban village notification a victory for those who love Goa: Adv Carlos
MAPUSA: Aldona Congress MLA Adv Carlos Alvares Ferreira on Saturday said that the state government’s decision to withdraw the ‘sinister’ notification to declare 56 villages in Goa as urban areas was a victory for the people of Goa against the government “which is out, just not to finish Goa, but to finish Goans and to make sure that we will become strangers in our own land.”
Speaking to the media, Adv Ferreira said that the notification recently issued was a revival of a similar notification issued in January 2020 which was scrapped after similar protests from people and yet the government has brought it back without any justification or any data to justify the need for it.
“If you remember in January 2020 they directly notified 56 villages as urban areas. Then noise was made, I had raised objections. I had said that this is the beginning of the destruction of the villages and finally on 20th February 2020, the government issued a notification withdrawing it. The question is, now in 2026 on the eve of the election, what was the justification for bringing it? Is it that the government wanted to change the status of the Village Panchayats, give benefits to builders and certain lobbies? Are there certain politicians who are directly involved in real estate as brokers or they are the ones who are actually into property deals who wanted to make some fast buck out of properties here in our constituency, including Aldona?” he asked.
“What is the basis to call our Aldona urban? If you want to say there is some population expansion, there are more people in this village then you have to keep the data of other villages because if there is a proportionate increase, then there’s no justification. Secondly, the census is still underway. The census of our nation is not complete. So what statistics are you using, what data are you using to declare only these villages? It means that these villages were under your lens, under your scrutiny probably for development and making your own personal pockets full,” he also asked.
“Even in Moira village, we had taken a resolution opposing this. This was the first VP in the entire Goa which opposed this and took a gram sabha resolution. Then started the series of other panchayats taking resolutions. But Moira was the first and we even said if the government decides to go ahead we will challenge it in the courts,” he also said.
He also questioned that if the declaration of a village as an urban area was being done under the Land Revenue Code, then why was the notification being issued by the Directorate of Panchayats and not the Revenue Department.
“When it is under the LRC, the first thing is the Revenue Department should have issued a notification saying that we intend to do it. The question is why did the Director ofPanchayats send a letter to the panchayats. What has the panchayat directorate to do with it? I think that the minister of panchayats has to explain and the director of panchayats has to explain why they took on the role and why they assumed jurisdiction of the revenue department to send this notification,” he questioned.
“Therefore the entire move was suspicious. Entire Goa was up in arms and this is a clear victory for every person in Goa who opposed this urbanisation plan, a sinister plan which would give unfettered development rights to these lobbies, to these builders and also to those probably have held property, purchased property and now will go to sell it by telling the buyers that the value has increased because now the proportions for urbanisation has increased including under CRZ regulations, if it is an urban area, you can probably to classify these areas as CRZ II. In urban areas it is CRZ II,” he surmised.
“This is the type of government that we have which is out, just not to finish Goa, but to finish Goans and to make sure that we will become strangers in our own land. Time to get rid of these people,” he concluded.
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