Adv Carlos says law to legalise illegal structures on comunidade land is a trap to deceive encroachers

PANAJI: Aldona Congress MLA Adv Carlos Alvares Ferreira slammed the recently passed amendment to the Code of Comunidades, which he said will be no no benefit to large number of Goans and instead has only been brought to give illegal encroachers a false sense of hope that they stand to benefit from it. In a video statement on social media, Adv Ferreira said that the law will in all likelihood be struck down by the Courts and will leave the beneficiaries hanging. “When you bring laws, you have to bring them for the benefit of the people not to cheat them. When bringing laws one should not be thinking about how to send the people to their graves,” Adv Carlos said. “When speaking on the Bill, you will see that I said at the outset, that I have no objection to regularisation of illegal structures and I even said that these people are in need of help, however, it will have to be done through a proper legal procedure and only then can they truly benefit and not have any false hope. This amendment is not to help those illegal encroaches on comunidade land and in fact it will be a great disservice to them. It will put them in a trap and it will finish them,” Adv Ferreira said. “I cited two judgments of the Supreme Court and even read the paragraphs in which the Supreme Court has said that they must be dealt with an iron hand. I even read an order of the Himachal Pradesh High Court that quashed a law brought by the government to legalise illegal constructions on government land and gave the government a time frame to have them removed. These are not cases where people have built illegal constructions on their own land without a construction licence, or an extra floor, or a larger construction than permitted. These are constructions built on someone else's land, in this case the Comunidade who is the land owner,” he said. “This is a law in which if you want your land regularised you have to get the consent of the Comunidade and if they do not give the consent, then you can file an appeal before the Administrator and if not then you can appeal to the government. Is this a proper law, if you are a land owner and you don't want to sell your land, then you don't have to give anyone any reason, however, this law means that if you don't want to sell your land the buyer can appeal against your decision to sell before the Administrator and the government,” he also said. “Do you think that the Comunidade will agree to part their land with somebody who wants to steal it? Now people will go to regularise their illegal structures, they will attach the plans for their structures, the law will get quashed and the Comunidades will end up with details of illegal structures on a platter for demolition. I had suggested an amendment to the law in order to make it foolproof for the benefit of the people. But the government does not want that. Instead it only wants to give false promises to the people,” he said. He also pointed out provisions of the law which will completely exclude all genuine Goans. “The law defines an eligible applicant as someone who is a resident of Goa for more than 15 years and who does not own any other immovable property in Goa either as a whole or a part of ancestral property either directly or through his family. This automatically means that most Goans, who own property or have a share in ancestral property or whose children or grandchildren have bought flats will be excluded from this,” he said. “Further there is a penal provision that if anyone is found to have made a false statement whilst filing an application under the law, it will be registered as a cognizable offence with a jail term of up to two years and a fine of ₹ 1-lakh. Which means you will not only lose your house but you will also go to jail,” Ferreira said.