From green to grey, in Goa

As the evening settles in, a handful of villagers gather in front of a temple painted yellow in Goa’s Palem village, about 10 kilometres from Panaji, the State capital. They are poring over crumpled zoning maps and copies of documents from the Town and Country Planning (TCP) Department.

The lanes of Palem have come alive with colours ahead of Shigmo, Goa’s spring festival. Side by side, the village is adorned with banners of “Save Palem Siridao village; say no to change of zone (39A)” and in Kokani: “Amchem udak amka zai (Our water to us)”.

In the group is Vasu Kankolikar (42), who says, “Several objections, suggestions, and appeals were made to the TCP, but they dismissed us. If we don’t fight them, our green canopies will slowly turn into yellow, then red, and they will sell it to make it grey.” Mr. Kankolikar is a resident of Palem and a former sarpanch.

He was one of at least 2,000, who sat in protest from February 21 to 27, moving from Palem to Panaji’s Azad Maidan, a site of previous protests around the Act. Palem falls in St. Andre constituency, one of Goa’s 40 Legislative Assembly seats. Viresh Borkar, the MLA from the Revolutionary Goans Party, along with others, sat on hunger strike and also protested outside TCP minister Vishwajit Rane’s house in Dona Paula, less than 10 km from Panaji. Rane is part of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has been part in power in Goa for 14 years now. Mr. Rane did not respond to queries.

The protest, and several like it over the past two years, has been against Goa’s Section 39A, which came into force under the Town and Country Planning (Amendment) Act, 2024. The section allows for the changing of ecologically sensitive zones, such as forests, hills, and farmland, to settlements zones. This, feel Goans, will open green spaces to real-estate development, disrupt the ecology, harm the livelihoods of people like fisherfolk, and throw the State into a civic mess. Goa is a collection of 320 inhabited villages (2011 Census), across two districts, with only one city, its capital Panaji.

“The problem with Section 39A is that it destroys the concept of planning. Every property owner is now a planner for their plot and can decide what they want to construct,” says Norma Alvares, lawyer and environmental activist based in Parra. “The regional plan (2011) was designed to protect Goa’s ecology, with 83% of the land classified as eco-sensitive. While the regional plan identifies 17–18 categories of eco-sensitive zones, Section 39A recognises only seven.” For instance, orchard zones, which are treated as ESZ-2 under the regional plan, where only restricted development is permitted, can be converted under Section 39A. ESZ-1 areas under the regional plan prohibit any development altogether.

In 2018, the Goa Assembly passed an amendment to the TCP Act, bringing in Section 16B that allows the chief town planner to change the zone in the regional plan. This was repealed in 2024, due to intense criticism. Meanwhile, Section 17(2) was introduced in March 2023. This allowed private owners to convert land they had bought by approaching the TCP department to “correct” any “inadvertent errors” in the regional plan. Owners could do this without public consultation. The Goa Bench of the Bombay High Court read down the amendment in April 2025.

“Section 39A popped up in February 2024, taking further the legacy of land grab,” says Neura-village-based architect and regional planner Tahir Noronha. He has compiled data from the Goa Government’s Gazette, and has found that applications have been submitted to the TCP department to convert 68 lakh square metres of land across Goa into settlement areas. Out of this, 13.6% has been unlocked already, he says.

Land locked

The strike ended on February 27. Protesters say Chief Minister Promod Sawant told them that he would suspend the land conversion proposals under the TCP Act for St. Andre constituency. He also allegedly said the three FIRs filed against the protestors would be scrapped. “The FIRs are not yet scrapped,” says Manoj Parab, a protester who has been summoned to the Panaji police station.

The FIRs, filed between February 21 and 26, named Parab, Borkar, Kankolikar, and 1,500 unnamed people, citing “unlawful assembly” and missing documents from the TCP office. “If identified, there is a possibility for some to lose their government jobs or be transferred far away from home,” says a man in his late 20s, standing in the group in front of the Palem temple, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Mr. Borkar says, “Our fight is to get 39A scrapped and introduce a Person of Goan Origin (POGO) Bill, prioritising locals. We also want laws for restrictions on selling of agricultural and forest land, and the Goa Panchayat Raj Act to define the scope of mega projects and approvals concerning it.”

In Palem, Tushar Gawas (28), a resident, points to the pond and hills beyond. Scrolling through documents on his phone, he points out that there are applications at the TCP office for 84,137 sqm of land to be converted into settlement lands. “So far, 5,000 sqm has been approved and converted under 39A in Palem. Entire regional plan maps will turn into orange, showing settlements instead of green cover,” Mr. Gawas says.

Goa’s residents stage a protest against land laws, at Azad Maidan in the capital city, Panaji, for a week in February.
| Photo Credit:
Dhiraj Gauns

This means that individuals or companies can purchase land and apply for its conversion, allowing for construction of residences or commercial properties. The analysis shows Pernem alone — close to the Manohar International Airport — has 10.2 lakh sqm provisionally converted to settlement area. Noronha’s data shows that so far, North Goa district is more affected than South Goa, by zone conversions.

“Basically, 39A allows big people to move without the villagers’ consent. What people want is to discuss these projects in our Gram Sabhas. If a builder wants to bring a project to our village, that builder needs to come to the Gram Sabha instead of striking a deal at the ministerial level,” says Mr. Noronha, highlighting that mostly large real estate companies are applying for 39A.

He says zone changing began in 1988. From then until 2006, the government added approximately 1.4 crore sqm of new settlement land. In 2006, a new regional plan came into being. “The villagers noticed that several villages were turned into settlement land in this plan, which led to one of the largest public movements, the Goa Bachao Abhiyan,” says Mr. Noronha. The plan was denotified after protests.

A complication in Goa’s land laws has been the Code of Communidades, a Portuguese-era document, framed in 1933, dealing with community-owned land that could be leased. After independence from colonial rule in 1961, the code ran parallel to the laws governing the rest of India.

“Many present-day decisions ignore these original Comunidade plans and treat such lands as if they have no established use. The confusion stems from the regional plan, which has been in effect for over a decade without a clear transition to a new land-use framework. This has resulted in interim mechanisms like 39A becoming permanent solutions,” says Elsa Fernandes, an architect-environmentalist.

She says terms like “occupant” and “tenant” emerged in land records after 1961. “Form I &XIV under the Goa Land Revenue Code reflects occupation and does not establish ownership, which has contributed to long-standing confusion over land titles and transactions in the State,” she says.

All for a view

Standing on the crest of a hill in Ella village, Glen Cabral looks out on to the Mandovi river. Behind him is the chapel of Our Lady of the Mount. He points to land notified to be converted from orchard land and says, “People are buying views at the cost of destroying the environment. Do they realise that soon there will be no view left at this pace in Goa due to construction?”

Old Goa — of which Ella is a part — is spread out across seven hills in the northern part of the State. The area has at least 2.6 lakh sqm of land proposed for change of zone, according to the Goa Gazette. In Ella, applications for land conversion amount to about 1.6 lakh sqm. Parts of this land fall in the zone of influence of the Carambolim Lake Wetland and in the buffer zone of the Our Lady of the Mount, a 16th century chapel. The villagers have filed an objection with the TCP regarding a Delhi-based construction and civil engineering company, which had bought property on the hill. The company has applied for land conversation.

“Bison were rarely to be seen; we never saw leopards in Goa. We can easily spot them now. These are signs that their homes are being encroached upon,” says Mr. Cabral, adding that spotting exotic birds is rare now. A railway tunnel passes beneath the hill.

Carrying the load

In Candolim, 15 km from Ella, in the Badrez taluka, applications are in to convert 29,764 sqm from orchard land, natural cover, and crematorium area to a settlement zone by an individual, as per the Goa Gazette. The Calangute Constituency Forum (CCF), a citizens’ association based in Candolim, objected and opposed the change, with CCF member Agnelo Barreto running signature campaigns.

“Part of the area is located in the vicinity of the lighthouse and Fort Aguada, marked as a heritage site, and the plateau is marked as a disaster management area. These violations hurt the local ecological balance. At least 50 trees on the slope are chopped,” says Mr. Barreto, looking at the map of Candolim from the TCP department.

Arpora village, also in Bardez taluka, and Chimbel in Tisawadi taluka also have similar problems. “There is a reason these forests are protected. This hill and its forests provides environmental services to the people. They are a buffer against pollution, anchoring the soil and protecting the biodiversity. You cannot privatise a public hill and put up a gate and deploy a security guard. If the hills are not stabilised, soil erosion is likely to happen and the area can be prone to floods,” says Arpora resident, Susan Koshy, walking along the base of the hill, pointing at a gate installed at what locals say is a public pathway to climb the hill.

Chimbel is 20 km from from Arpora, where villagers sat on strike for 45 days in January opposing government projects of a 17-storey building, Prashashan Stambh, and a nine-storey Unity mall to be built near the lake, a source of water for farmers in the nearby region. “They suspended the project. But were these projects needed? Does the village have carrying capacity?” says Govind Shirodkar, Biodiversity Management Committee Chairperson, a person selected from within the panchayat to represent the village’s ecological interests.

Goan residents mostly have a problem with commercial interests in common lands and on eco-sensitive zones. “Section 39A brings in people who have no relationship with the land or its people. They want swimming pools for each bungalow. There is a total breakdown of the village when outsiders come to Goa with the intention of turning it into Delhi or Haryana or wherever they come from,” says Ms. Alvares.

“The problem with Section 39A is that every property owner is a planner for their plot and can decide what they want to construct”Norma AlvaresLawyer and environmental activist