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BAMBOLIM PROJECT SMELLS OF CORRUPTION? By Dr Olav Albuquerque
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BAMBOLIM PROJECT SMELLS OF CORRUPTION? By Dr Olav Albuquerque

Aug 09-Aug 15, 2025, LAW August 8, 2025 , by

THE Town & Country Planning (TCP) Department has nearly always grabbed headlines for the wrong reasons. This time too, Sant Andre MLA Viresh Borkar has alleged there was corruption and irregularities in granting permission for the controversial Bambolim project, targeting construction activities carried out by Worldwide Resorts and Entertainment.
 Goa is already turning into a nightmare of small matchbox buildings replacing the over 100-year-old Portuguese-style bungalows of old which foolish Goans have been selling to builders from Delhi and Mumbai, to rake in a few crore, a part of which will go towards buying some of the match-box flats in new buildings, not realizing their outgoings will be 30 times more than the low house tax they have to pay every year to the village panchayat.
Those who come from Delhi, like a former DGP of police, sought to build a bungalow at Porvorim after seeking favours from the government. Former chief secretary Puneet Kumar Goel was shunted out after he bought land from a Canadian. These IPS and IAS officers want to buy second and third homes in Goa where their sons and daughters will come on a holiday.
OR perhaps set up a business like Smriti Irani’s daughter set up a business in Goa, plunging her mother into a controversy which was exposed by the advocate-activist Aires Rodrigues. Perhaps Goans do not understand that their ancestral houses stand on freehold land, which means they have an absolute title to their ancestral land. After seeking permission from the village panchayat, they can add more rooms to their ancestral bungalows if they wish. Contrast this with Mumbai city, which is built on leasehold land reclaimed from the sea. Huge white placards proclaim this along Colaba, Mazagaon, Byculla and other areas.

LEASEHOLD LAND
THE prestigious Catholic Gymkhana, Parsi Gymkhana, Islam Gymkhana which stand along Marine Drive, proclaims this. Leasehold land means you are not the absolute owner of the land on which your building stands, but you have to pay some amount to the owner of the land who may terminate your lease if you break any conditions of the lease agreement.
 But to return to Goa, Borkar, along with activists from the Revolutionary Goans (RG), protested against what they called illegal practices at the construction site, including illegal tree felling, excavation on steep hill slopes that threaten aquifers, and construction without mandatory environmental clearances. He alleged these activities violate the Environment Protection Act and the Goa Land Development and Building Construction Regulations, 2010. Borkar has demanded that an FIR be registered against the developers and officials allegedly complicit in the violations.
In defence, TCP Minister Vishwajit Rane maintained that all permissions were issued in line with the Goa Land Development and Building Construction Rules. He stressed that the area falls under a settlement zone as per the Regional Plan 2021. Rane highlighted a loophole in the current system, where approvals are granted based on certifications submitted by chartered engineers or surveyors, documents that are rarely cross-verified by the Town & Country Planning (TCP) department, making the process overly reliant on self-declarations.
We must wait and watch if our new governor will play any role in all these shenanigans. It is unlikely he will do so because he was nominated by the BJP and is not in the league of Satyapal Malik who was outspoken in flaying the Goa government for alleged corruption during the Covid-19 when an indeterminate number of Goans died.
Malik categorically alleged there was corruption within the government during the Covid pandemic. For his pains he was shunted out. Un-cowed by all the brouhaha, he gave an explosive interview to Rajdeep Sardessai reiterating his allegations of corruption. For his bravado, he was rewarded with a CBI probe for various decisions he took during his tenure as governor.
But Pusapati Ashok Gajapathi Raju, who took charge as Governor of Goa on August 26, 2025 at a function held at Raj Bhavan, will not be so outspoken. The Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court, Justice Alok Aradhe, administered him the oath of office.
In a separate development, the Lok Sabha on Tuesday passed a bill to provide reservation to Scheduled Tribes in the Goa Assembly, amid opposition protests demanding discussion on revision of the Bihar electoral rolls continued unabated.

COMICAL TWIST
IN another comical twist, it was revealed in the Goa Legislative Assembly that there was just one donkey left in Goa. This is strange given the fact that a few of our leaders can claim to belong to that species!
And finally, in a horrific crime, a 46-year-old man was arrested after he flung acid on a 17-year-old boy, days after his minor daughter committed suicide following the break-up between the two, the Goa Police revealed on July 1.
Superintendent of Police (North Goa) Rahul Gupta said the accused, a resident of Sindhudurg district in neighbouring Maharashtra, attacked the boy on Monday when the latter was waiting for a bus to go to his school in Mapusa town.
While this is not the place for sermonizing, the man’s suicide must have left the father devastated. Rather than allowing the “law to take its own course,” which is a favourite phrase used by our politicians, the irate father decided to take the law into his own hands. He must have reasoned that the Juvenile Court would have given the 17-year-old boy a suspended sentence, if at all, he would be booked, which was unlikely since the offence of abetting the girl’s suicide has not been made out.

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