Regional Plan

Goa’s first Regional Plan (RP) 2001 was approved in 1986, and promoted ‘high-end’ tourism, giving many concessions to capitalist hoteliers with relaxed construction norms. The second Regional Plan 2011 was released in 2006 and made large-scale conversions of green zones to settlement zones. Goa Bachao Abhiyan was formed by a concerned group of people across the state. GBA undertook comparative studies across villages to verify the scale of conversions in the pipeline, organized awareness meetings across the State and a massive public meeting on 18th December 2006. On Republic Day in January 2007, as the agitation mounted, several gram sabhas took resolutions to scrap the RP 2011. The government buckled under pressure and announced the cancellation of the RP 2011.

However, the RP 2021 process was also controversial, and the final notification of the RP 2021 disregarded the village development plans submitted by the gram sabha. While the review of the RP process was an important issue in the 2007 and 2012 elections, each successive Government has used the opposition to the Plan, in the manner proposed, to stall it, while introducing zoning regulations that facilitate the bypassing of the Plan, and by introducing statutory bodies such as the Investment Development Board, that make a mockery of both the Constitution and the Town and Country Planning Act. Ganv Ghor Rakhonn Manch, Village Groups of Goa, Preserve Goa, Goenchea Xetkarancho Ekvott were various groups that opposed the Regional Plan and filed objections to the proposed plan and mega projects that indirectly validated the Regional Plan.

Presently Goencho Awaaz and Goenkars against PDAs have once again brought the issue of the Regional Plan and the revamp of the Town and Country Planning Act to the fore and a strong mobilisation for people-centered, democratic, and locally and ecologically appropriate planning in Goa.