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Enabling the Great Goan Land Grab
The Goa Requisition and Acquisition of Property Bill, 2017 and the Goa Compensation to the Project Affected Persons and Vesting of Land in the Government Bill, 2017 are the latest additions to the state government’s arsenal of legal tools to facilitate acquisition and conversion of land within the state, while insulating itself from any consequence of “environmental justice.” This follows a national trend of deploying legal language and institutions to support an aggressive approach towards appropriation of land assets.
August 2017 has seen two ominous developments in the domain of land-related legislations in Goa. On the one hand, the Goa state assembly, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), passed two new bills intended to ease the acquisition of land for “public purposes.” On the other hand, the BJP-led central government issued a notification requiring that all environmental litigation originating from Goa, which have so far been placed before the National Green Tribunal’s (NGT) West Zone Bench in Pune, be shifted to the NGT’s Principal Bench in Delhi. This is the latest turn in a series of moves through which the government has enabled access to land, whilst simultaneously disabling civil society-led opposition.
Enabling Access to Land
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