The Government of Goa has today become the single biggest thief of private and comunidade properties in the State.

A recent case is the acquisition of land for the International Cricket Stadium, a pet project of Dayanand Narvekar and the Goa Cricket Association, to be located at Thivim. The acquisition involved two classes of land. The first was a bunch of paddy fields just outside Mapusa town. Though the sales and services report of the enquiry officer (land acquisition) indicated that the compensation to be paid to the farmers would have to be in the region of nearly Rs.6 crores, the department on its own decided internally to reduce the amount to less than Rs.1 crore. This is wholesale misappropriation of property from ordinary people who are unable to fight back.

I am not going into this issue right now as the farmers have filed cases for enhanced compensation and they ought to get Rs.6 crores instead of chicken feed. But you can say in passing that at least some money is being paid for the farmers’ land.

But now read further and discover how government brazenly appropriated to itself 44,000 sq.mts of land from the Sirsaim Comunidade for the same project without paying a rupee.

An area of 44,000 sq. mts of the land acquired for the cricket stadium at Thivim was identified as forest by the Sawant and Karapurkar Expert Committees. Once the Goa Foundation drew this to the attention of the government in February 2007, it imposed a clampdown on any work in the area. Media reports had indicated that Mr. Narvekar wanted the tenders for construction to be issued in January 2007 itself.

The Goa government then filed an application for diversion of the forest land under the provisions of the Forest Conservation Act, 1980.

As per existing laws concerning proposals that involve destruction of natural forests, the following conditions must be met if the Ministry of Environment & Forests is to approve the proposal:

a) Payment by the developer of Net Present Value (NPV) of the diverted forest land, which in the Thivim case amounted to Rs.30.5 lakhs.

b) Payment towards compensatory afforestation, which in the Thivim case was another Rs.4 lakhs.

c) Handover of equivalent land for the compensatory forest to be raised.

The Sports Department coughed up the huge amount of Rs.34.5 lakhs, thus meeting conditions (a) and (b). Note that this money came from the public exchequer, and not from the pockets of the Goa Cricket Association, a private body, for which the backdoor acquisition was intended.

Forest condition (c) was more difficult since land is a scarce commodity in Goa. In the case of the Thivim cricket stadium, the Goa government simply stole the land that was required to put up for compensatory afforestation!

Mr. Narvekar on his own admission in writing said he was “successful” in giving 44,000 sq.mts of land from the Comunidade of Sirsaim to the forest department for afforestation. How was this achieved?

On 24^th July 2007, the Comunidade Attorney issued a letter to the Conservator of Forests which stated that the Sirsaim Comunidade “has resolved to give an area of 44,000 sq. mts of its vacant land situated at Sirsaim near Thivim station bearing Survey No. 12 for forestation.” The letter also adds that this land of 40,000 sq. mts., “is in lieu of land being used by government for International Cricket Stadium at Thivim, which is acquired by government bearing survey no. 404, which is classified as private forest.” The letter concluded: “Kindly accept our land and take possession of the same in public interest and set up the International Cricket Stadium.”

While the approval of the comunidade was conveyed to the Government by the Attorney on 24^th July 2007, the notice for the meeting of the Comunidade of Sirsaim to be held on the 19^th of August to approve the handover only appeared in the Goa Gazette on 2^nd August 2007. Since there was no quorum on 19^th August, the meeting was abandoned. However, on the same day, the Managing Committee met and approved the proposal! (Incidentally, the very same managing committee is now facing a High Court enquiry for forgery of documents, illegal allotment of over 300 plots, misappropriation of funds and other irregularities.) Thus the decision to handover 44,000 sq.mts of land of Sirsaim Comunidade without receiving even a token consideration was taken almost one month after the Attorney had not only anticipated the decision but also conveyed it in writing to the Forest Department.

Under the Code of Comunidades, there is no provision in the Code for handing over free even one square metre of land (much less 44,000 sq.mts) to the government or anyone else. Comunidades may issue land on lease to the government but no land can be “distrained” permanently. In no case can land be handed over without a consideration.

Despite being aware of the provisions of the Code, the Revenue Department issued an order on 15^th July 2008 conveying approval of the government for the grant of land by the Comunidade of Sirsaim to the Forest Department “in lieu of equal land acquired by the government to build the cricket stadium at Thivim.” The words “in lieu of” appear nonsensical in the context since the land at Thivim had been acquired under the provisions of the Land Acquisition Act and belonged to the government whereas the land of the Comunidade of Sirsaim could never belong to the government except by land acquisition.

The Revenue Department in its letter of 15^th July refers to the Thivim land as “private forestation of the Forest Department.” How do senior bureaucrats write such rubbish?

Only one last obstacle still remained.

The Forest Conservation Act 1980 insists that the land for compensatory afforestation must be mutated in the records and the Forest Department must be shown as its sole owner. Accordingly, the Forest Department wrote to the Talathi of Sirsaim regarding the mutation. The Comunidade wrote to the Talathi requesting him to show the name of the Department of Forest under the “other rights” column for the Comunidade still considered itself the owner of the plot. However, this was rejected by the Forest Department in February 2008. Without further ado, the name of the Forest Department was now shown in the occupant’s column! Thus overnight, without payment of any consideration, deed of conveyance or any of the laborious processes of land acquisition, 44,000 sq.mts of Sirsaim Comunidade land became the property of the Goa Government!

This land was now presented to the Ministry of Environment as the land that would be used for the purpose of replacing the forest proposed to be destroyed at Thivim.

More surprises? Survey No. 12 of the Sirsaim Comunidade – of which the 44,000 sq.mts is a part – is subject of a legal agreement of 25 years standing between the Forest Department and the Comunidade for purposes of raising social forestry. The agreement was signed in 1986 and expires in 2011. The same land that is supposed to have a social forest was now being reassigned to grow another forest! Maybe the second forest is to be located in the stratosphere, above the present one, so that we can confirm that it is indeed growing from any part of Goa!

Thus it is clear that the purpose of the entire exercise is not to grow a forest, but only to declare an intent to do so. In exchange for this dubious intent, 2500 priceless forest trees at Thivim will lose their life. The trunks of these are now already marked for destruction.

So 4.5 ha of extremely rich, irreplaceable, dense forest will make way for people who will occasionally play games for entertainment with pieces of wood called bats and stumps made from felled trees so that sponsors can make money and Mr Dayanand Narvekar can once again sell any number of tickets for cricket tamashas with a little more confidence since the stadium is a few hundred metres from his house.

The felled forest of Thivim will add to global warming since a good deal of it will be burnt. (Incidentally there have been several efforts to set it on fire over the last 2-3 years.)

This development circus, in normal course, would not be permitted by any group of vigilant citizens. That the proposal for the stadium has reached this stage indicates how deep is the slumber of the people of Thivim (who stand to lose their forest) and Sirsaim (who stand to lose their land).

On 19.11.2009, the Forest Department issued a gazette notification officially declaring the land of 44,000 sq.mts of Sirsaim Comunidade as the property of Government and – though there is not a single tree standing on the plot – constituted it as a “forest” under the Indian Forest Act, 1927. Amen.