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THE 130 ACRE GAMBLE! By Raaisa Lemos Vaz
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THE 130 ACRE GAMBLE! By Raaisa Lemos Vaz

Cover Story, May 16- May 22, 2026 May 15, 2026 , by

The Abhinandhan Lodha projects in Karapur village will impose a huge burden on the rural economy at Bicholim taluka. Imagine the overload of 1,000 plus villas with swimming pools and an artificial beach in Goa — for the benefit of the bold and the beautiful, and the rich and powerful….

IN the quiet, lush hinterlands of Bicholim, where the scent of cashew plantations usually dominates the air and the red dust of the mining belt settles on ancient temple roofs, a different kind of “conquest” is underway. On glossy billboards lining the highway and Instagram feeds, it is known as “One Goa” — a 130-acre, Ibiza-themed “branded land” township by The House of Abhinandan Lodha (HoABL).
 But at ground level in the narrow winding lanes of Karapur and Sarvan, the project has become the flashpoint for a civil war over Goa’s soul. It is a collision between the high-octane world of luxury real estate and a rising tide of citizen activism, framed by a high-stakes legal battle that threatens to rewrite the rules of Goan land use forever.
The sheer magnitude of “One Goa” is difficult to overstate. Technically registered under the entity Errichter Infra Private Limited, the project represents one of the largest private land-use shifts in recent Goan history. We are not looking at a mere housing colony, but a full-scale private city embedded within a rural landscape. The project promises over 1,300 residential plots and villas, anchored by a massive 40,000 sq ft clubhouse and a man-made white-sand beach which is very much a surreal addition to a real beach miles away in a coastal village.
Interestingly, the developer markets this as a “carbon-negative” sustainable development, strategically located 40 minutes from the new Mopa (Manohar) International Airport. For investors from Delhi or Mumbai, the starting price of Rs90 lakh for a slice of the “Goan Dream” is an irresistible siren song. However, for locals, the project represents an “urban island” that threatens to consume the very resources that make Bicholim liveable.
The project is registered in multiple phases which mean, that the project has met the basic filing requirements to market and sell plots. To put this in perspective, this single project is larger than several local Goan hamlets combined. For a rural taluka like Bicholim, adding over a thousand luxury units — and the thousands of support staff, vehicles, and visitors they bring — is an overnight demographic shift that the existing infrastructure was never designed to absorb.
Aside from this, the scale of the project is also controversial because of how the land use was authorized.
Land Reclassification: Large portions of the site were originally classified as Orchard or Agricultural land in the Regional Plan 2021.
Section 39A: The developer applied for a change of zone under Section 39A of the Town and Country Planning (TCP) Act. This section allows for “corrections” to the Regional Plan.

WATER DIVERSIONS
THE potential diversion of water from local agricultural fields to maintain luxury pools and the man-made sea and the runoff from 130 acres of paved surfaces and treated sewage threatens the Mayem Lake ecosystem and local aquifers.
Activists and a pending Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Bombay High Court allege that this was not a “correction” but a massive “spot-zoning” exercise used to convert eco-sensitive land into a high-density settlement zone without sufficient environmental clearance. The sheer scale of nearly 1,400 plots in a rural hinterland like Bicholim has led to intense debate over carrying capacity as well, as, the project is permitted to draw on local infrastructure, but there are no publicly clear plans for how the local grid or water supply will handle a sudden influx of thousands of residents and high-maintenance amenities like a man-made beach.
By early 2026, the Bombay High Court had already delivered judgments (such as in June 2025) striking down similar “plot-by-plot” conversion rules under Section 17(2) of the TCP Act. While Section 39A is different, the PIL against the Bicholim project specifically challenges its permissions on the grounds that they serve “private interest over public good”.
At the heart of the resistance are environmental activists like Swapnesh Sherlekar. Sherlekar who has become the face of the “Enough is Enough” movement, is using RTIs to expose what he terms “backdoor land deals.”

DEFAMATION SUITS
IN response, HoABL filed a Rs15 crore defamation suit against Sherlekar, alleging a “malicious campaign” to tarnish their brand. In early 2026, the High Court issued an interim order restraining him from making further “loose” statements. This has created a “chilled” environment for public discourse, effectively placing a gag order on the activist until the next hearing in July 2026.
Sherlekar’s defence remains rooted in the data: he argues that the “permission scale” was granted by bypassing standard environmental impact assessments — a claim that gains weight as Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant recently directed the revocation of several similar land conversions in the same taluka.
For potential buyers, “One Goa” is a high-risk, high-reward gamble. While the RERA registrations are active, the underlying land-use permissions are sub-judice. From an ecological perspective, conversion of such a massive contiguous land parcel has already fundamentally altered the local habitat for indigenous vertebrate and invertebrate species.
As the defamation case and the PIL move toward a summer showdown, the Bicholim project stands as a cautionary tale. It is no longer just about real estate; it is a test case for whether Goa’s future will be dictated by administrative “corrections” or by the ecological carrying capacity of the land itself.
The “One Goa” project, while promising a “green” lifestyle, also shows us two realities: A tale of clubhouses and of water shortages. It represents a permanent loss of biodiversity that no amount of clubhouse landscaping can replace.

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