Goa Khabar: <\/strong>Justice Gautam Patel, retired judge of the Bombay High Court in a stirring speech said that Goa needed a people\u2019s referendum to throw out the controversial, section 39A of the Town and Country Planning Act.<\/p>\n Justice Patel, who was delivering a special lecture on the occasion of the launch of the fifth edition of \u201cFish, curry and rice\u201d Goa Foundation\u2019s landmark book on environment minced no words when he said, \u201cGoa is not meat in a butcher\u2019s shop which can be carved out and sold.\u201d<\/p>\n Referring to section 39 A as the \u201cgorilla in the room\u201d, the retired judge bemoaned the fact that Goa was on the brink of an environmental disaster. \u201cThis section allows the chief town planner to play God and makes the common citizens of Goa mere supplicants. Section 39A is fundamentally wrong. The people of Goa must have the right to vote against this section,\u201d Justice Patel said.<\/p>\n The retired judge also bemoaned the fact that Goans had become the \u201cothers\u201d in their own state. \u201cNon-Goans are being allowed to take charge of the state. Goa is being dismantled bit by bit. This is not alright, \u201d Justice Patel said.<\/p>\n Addressing the tribal women of Chimbel in chaste Marathi, the retired judge congratulated them for undertaking their 44-day fast to beat back the state government\u2019s plan to build a large mall on their forest lands. He said, \u201cYour victory is not yours alone. You have served a warning to the government, that they cannot ignore the citizens\u2019 voice.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier in the evening, Justice Ferdino Rebello, architect of the \u201cEnough is Enough\u201d people\u2019s movement hit out at the Goa chief minister Pramod Sawant for terming environmental activists as \u201cUrban Naxalites\u201d, stating that the Constitution of India gave every citizen of this country a right to fight for their environment. \u201cPeople in power must choose their words carefully,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n One of the key highlights of this evening\u2019s function\u00a0 was the felicitation of 16 eco-warriors who have been fighting relentlessly to preserve and protect the ecology of Goa. A touching tribute was also paid to the memory of South Goa activist Diana Tavares, who recently passed away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Goa Khabar: Justice Gautam Patel, retired judge of the Bombay High Court in a stirring speech said that Goa needed a people\u2019s referendum to throw out the controversial, section 39A of the Town and Country Planning Act. Justice Patel, who was delivering a special lecture on the occasion of the launch of the fifth edition […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25169,"featured_media":110543,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[155,6],"tags":[3794],"class_list":["post-110542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-155","category-6","tag-featured"],"read":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goakhabar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goakhabar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goakhabar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goakhabar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/25169"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goakhabar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=110542"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.goakhabar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110544,"href":"https:\/\/www.goakhabar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110542\/revisions\/110544"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goakhabar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/110543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goakhabar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=110542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goakhabar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=110542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goakhabar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=110542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}