GSPCB’s nod to MPT’s coal is on No Man’s Land

Oherald: Goa: Sunday, July 01, 2018.

Goa government has got exposed thanks to an RTI by Vasco’s Savio Correia to MPT and an unstarred LAQ No. 011 on February 22, 2018 asked by Curtorim MLA Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco in Goa Legislative Assembly

Even though Goa State Pollution Control Board (GSPCB) has allowed Mormugao Port Trust to handle eight lakh tonnes of coal per month at berth Nos 5A, 6A and 7, operated by JSW-owned South West Port Limited (SWPL) and Adani Mormugao Port Terminal Pvt Ltd with a monthly cap of four lakh tonnes each, what is emerging is that Berth Nos. 5A, 6A and 7 have been illegally reclaimed by MPT from River Zuari without permission from the government of Goa (GoG). What is even more shocking is that the State government is yet to survey and assign survey number to these berths, yet has been allowing coal to be dumped on these berths.

It is increasingly becoming clear that the government has been hand in glove with MPT since 2000 allowing it to land the coal of infrastructure giant JSW-owned South West Port Limited (SWPL) on Berth Nos 5A and 6A first, followed by Adani Mormugao Port Terminal Pvt Ltd on Berth No 7. The reclaimed land that MPT has been gifting away to the coal barons measures a little less than 5,78,033 square metres which is almost 26 per cent of the total port area.

On July 9, 2001, GoG granted 16,29,795 sq metres of land belonging to it to MPT under Section 21 of the Goa Land Revenue Code. What has emerged subsequently is that MPT had without permission of GoG reclaimed large swaths of land from River Zuari. GoG never discovered these patches of land on satellite images or even Google Earth and hence never cared to survey or register these lands till Chicalim’s Edwin Mascarenhas brought it to the notice of Goa’s Chief Secretary Dharmendra Sharma (on February 19, 2018) and then Captain James Braganza, Captain of Ports (CoP), GoG (on March 5, 2018).

“I had heard Union Minister of Shipping, Road Transport & Highways Nitin Gadkari saying that I am sad to say that the CoP keeps raising some issue or the other, every now and then. The fact is that it is because of such officers (CoP) that GoG is not having an easy run implementing government of India and MPT’s projects such as coal berths,” Mascarenhas said. Mascarenhas’ letters to the State government and a 40-odd page of evidence with Herald shows how it (GoG) has sold the lungs and lives of the people of Vasco and adjoining areas to coal importers.

Goa government has got exposed thanks to an RTI by Vasco’s Savio Correia to MPT and an unstarred LAQ No. 011 on February 22, 2018 asked by Curtorim MLA Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco in Goa Legislative Assembly.

MPT had whilst answering Correia’s question on the total area of land owned/held by it revealed that there was an excess of 5,78,033 sq mtrs with it. Technically speaking, MPT can only administer, control and manage the port’s jurisdiction area as per Major Port Trust Act, 1963. The land that Goa government never gave it in 2001 was illegally reclaimed by it from Zuari. As recent as February 2018, Revenue Minister Rohan Khaunte in a reply to unstarred LAQ No. 011 revealed that the reclamation was not done with the prior knowledge of Goa government and that the survey of reclaimed land measuring 5,78,464 sq metres was not surveyed nor survey numbers allotted till date.

This raises the all-important question: Wasn’t GSPCB’s nod to MPT, Jindal owned SWPL and Adanis ultra vires since the area of the operation itself is illegal and unaccounted for in law, a no man’s land?