Margao: A Right to Information (RTI) reply has pulled curtains back on a bureaucratic muddle that has stalled the high court-mandated drive against illegal roadside constructions in Assolda, Quepem taluka, with the PWD (roads) admitting it does not have the complete land acquisition plan needed to even identify which structures are encroaching on govt land.The RTI reply, obtained by social activist Aditya Dessai, shows that the PWD’s Quepem (Roads) division is sitting on incomplete records for major district roads (MDRs) passing through Assolda, Xelvona, Xic-Xelvona, and Hodar. This glaring shortcoming has now derailed a joint inspection ordered to weed out encroachments along this stretch.The trail of paperwork begins on Apr 7, 2025, when the Assolda panchayat wrote to the assistant engineer, PWD (Roads), asking for details of structures identified during the land acquisition process. The panchayat needed this to verify which illegal constructions fell within the road-widening area, as directed by the high court in its suo motu public interest litigation on roadside encroachments.The PWD’s response, dated Apr 21, 2025, was telling in itself: while some land acquisition awards and plans existed, the department said a joint inspection involving the panchayat, the survey department and PWD officials would be needed to actually pin down encroachments on acquired land.Acting on this, the panchayat issued a public notice scheduling the joint inspection for May 30, 2025, to survey illegal structures along the highway and MDRs within its limits. But documents accessed through the RTI show the inspection never got off the ground—officials simply did not have the land acquisition plan required to mark out the acquired road boundary, let alone flag commercial establishments or structures encroaching on it.The panchayat was later forced to inform the Goa state pollution control board that it could not furnish information on commercial establishments along the highway and MDR stretches, citing the unavailability of proper land records.In effect, months after the court’s directions, the very documentation needed to enforce them appears to be missing, incomplete, or simply untraceable.Dessai, who filed the RTI, said: “If the department itself does not possess complete land acquisition records, it becomes impossible to accurately identify encroachments or illegal structures on acquired road land. This raises serious concerns about record management and the effective implementation of the high court’s directions.”He demanded that govt move swiftly to locate, digitise, and properly maintain all land acquisition plans so that any future enforcement action rests on authentic documentation. Dessai also stressed that public access to these records was essential to ensure the anti-encroachment drive, when it does resume, is carried out fairly and without legal ambiguity.
