Goa faces legal tangle after scrapping SEZs

Even as the Goa government on Monday decided to scrap all 12 exclusive special economic zones in the state and recommended to the Centre the denotification of three zones, Commerce Ministry officials warned that the state government would have to deal with the probable legal consequences of the decision.

"We will write to the Centre to scrap the eight proposals pending for approval while we will not notify the four (SEZs) that are already approved. About the rest three, we will take up the matter with the Centre to denotify them," said Chief Minister Digamber Kamat.

The recommendation means that investments worth more than Rs 4,600 crore in seven formally approved zones will not come in. These zones have land in their possession.

"It is for the state government to decide and face consequences. The Board of Approval (for SEZs) gave its nod only after the state government's recommendations. Some developers have already started construction and may want their money back," said a Commerce Ministry official.

Significantly, Goa is the first Congress-ruled state to go back on SEZs. Other states which have seen trouble over SEZs include West Bengal, Maharashtra and Haryana, mainly because land-owners protested against land acquisition for the zones.

In contrast, the protests in Goa are spearheaded by ordinary citizens who fear for the future of a territory that is an idyllic tourist getaway.

"The citizens of Goa, bothered by the infrastructure crunch, took forward the anti-SEZ movement, while in Maharashtra and Haryana, it's the land-owners who are leading the protests," said Manshi Asher, a civil activist and an independent researcher on SEZ-related issues.

According to Asher, the genesis of the movement lay in the Goa Regional Plan of 2011, which was criticised widely and led to the resignation of Town and Country Planning Minister Atanasio Monserrate in January 2007.

"Subsequently, Goan citizen groups, which were vocal against the regional plan, focused on SEZs and their impact on infrastructure and environment, which were already under pressure because of tourism and mining," added Asher.

Over and above, there were concerns on immigration of people from other states, he said.