MISUSE OF LAW TO MAKE SEAFRONT BAYS INTO RIVERBANK

All over the world, the beaches are the places of beauty where the people want to spend their valuable quality time with family and friends. If the roaring Sea waves on the seafront of a beach is silenced to calm down by the instrument of law, that will be a historic epoch in India. Government authorities are trying to do it by misinterpreting one small word “Bay” in the CRZ Notifications. The government of India had passed Coastal Regulatory Zone (CRZ) Notifications 1991, 2011 and 2019 declaring the area of the Seafront up to 500 metres as CRZ area. And the riverbanks up to 100 metre land wards side as CRZ area.as per 2011 Notification which will finally become 50 Metres under 2019 Notification. This law has affected some illegally constructions on the Beaches. This supposedly has prompted the authorities to misinterpret the law to save these illegal constructions on the Beaches.

In one of the case the NGT(SZ) appointed a committee to evaluate the violation on the beach of Karwar, Karnataka. The committee reported among other things, that because the beach is named as ‘Karwar bay’ the 100/50-meter width of the beach will apply as per 2011/2019 CRZ Notifications even to the saline water Bodies of Seafronts. With this they will clearly approve all the violation of hotels of powerful politicians and parks they have identified.

The State and National Coastal Management Authorities (CZMA) are responsible for preparing and approving the Coastal Zone Management Plan (CZMP) respectively. They have offloaded the preparation of CZMP to another Chennai-based government agency- National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM). The NCSCM drew the CZMP 2011 with some Seafronts (Karwar, Karnataka and Bogmollo, Goa) equal to riverbanks, because they are given in the maps as “Bays. The CRZ notification comes into force only after the finalisation of CZMP. The Karnataka CZMP 2011 was approved in 2018. The Goan Public opposed and rejected their CZMP 2011 because of its discrepancies in the plan. Among many controversies, most important one now which is going to affect the Karwar, Bogmollo beach and the whole length of “Bay of Bengal” and other sea fronts which are marked as “Bay” because of the erroneous interpretation of the word “Bay” found in the CRZ Notification 2011 and 2019. The CRZ notification identifies two kinds of water bodies. One is Seafront (Saline) and the other one is River, Estuaries, Creeks (Non-saline) etc. The law is very clear in stating that all sea fronts shall be given 500 metre of Beach width land wards. and for other non-saline water body it is 100 in 2011 Notification and 50 metres in 2019 Notifications towards land, because they have a limited reduced land on these riverbanks as they flow into the indentation inside the geography of the land. As per the first clause the 500 meters CRZ area can be directly applied to all the seafronts. And an explanation for the seafront is further provided as that which has a salinity of more than 5 ppt. All the seafront has salinity above 25 ppt and there is no chance under any law to consider this as a non-saline water body equal to riverbanks. But NCSCM has done this for Karwar and Bogmollo selectively and blindly approved by the Coastal Zone authorities (CZMA). The use of the word ‘Bay’ somewhere doesn’t disqualify them from being seafronts to make them a riverbank. The Karwarian and Goan Stakeholders have raised their objections to this mapping agency and the CZMA’s, but there has no respite till date. Instead, they appoint committees of their own people to write whatever they intend to write to pass on the responsibility to the collective third party. The beautiful beaches are a potential tourism business property for the unscrupulous hotel business and corrupt politicians. Some people suspect that this is done to protect some sea side hotels of influential people which are violating the CRZ laws. If the word “Bay” forces them to apply river limits of 50 metres to seafronts which are called Bay, then why it is not applied for the beaches of the Bay of Bengal including Marina Beach of Chennai by the Chennai-based NCSCM? is the question raised by many. The agencies should understand that the sea will remain a sea with its salinity and the beaches in whatever name it is called. If the law is applied by misinterpretation selectively in this way, all the beautiful beaches on the east coast and many on the west coast will be destroyed by the same agencies like National and State Coastal Zone Management Authorities which are constituted to protect it. This selective application of erroneous interpretation of law smells of dirty business to destroy beaches surrendering to the greed of mankind.

-Author Vidyadhar Durgekar is an ex-officer of the Indian Coast Guard, an auditor of Environment/sustainability standards. He is a bilingual writer with nine publications to his credit. He has written many articles on environment in local newspapers as well as international magazine. He has filed one PIL in Karnataka High Court for protection of Karwar Beach against the Port expansion project and another in NGT(SZ) against the illegal construction on the Karwar beach and CZMP 2019.