In what appears to be a clever undermining of the cause of coast protection, the state department of environment has sent suggestions on the draft Coastal Regulations Zone notification 2018 to the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF) without consulting the main coastal environment protection agency in the state, the Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority (GCZMA). Director of environment Ravi Jha has sent a letter to the MoEF stating that his department has held consultations with the stakeholders, various departments of the state government and corporations, with respect to the draft CRZ notification 2018 before making the suggestions. And Jha did not call the GCZMA for the meetings, though he is its member secretary! The GCZMA is a special authority with experts to manage the coastal zone, but it has been kept in dark by its member secretary! Should GCZMA continue with a secretary who does not consider the authority as a stakeholder? Did he assume that by virtue of being the member secretary, though an administrator and not an expert, he enjoyed the powers to decide on behalf of the experts of the GCZMA? Jha’s letter to the Union government does not mention which departments or corporations participated in the deliberations. Jha does not give details of the discussions on the proposed reduction of high tide line (HTL) to 50 metres under the new draft CRZ notification. The suggestions made by him seem to be mainly a listing of the interests of the departments of tourism and town and country planning. In the government’s view, the draft notification is contrary to the tourism policy of the state as regards the erection of temporary seasonal structures. The state government has sought to amend the CRZ- III A and B areas so as to allow reconstruction of dwelling units not exceeding nine metres in height to any citizen of India and not to just restrict the person enjoying traditional rights as such restrictions were in violation of fundamental rights of the people in the country. The state has also sought to do away with the requirement of CRZ clearance for any additional or supplementary pre-design stage facilities envisaged for future structural requirements on national highways, state highways, major district and rural roads. However, the suggestions should have ideally been studied and approved by the GCZMA before they were forwarded to the MoEF for incorporation in the final CRZ notification 2018. The Centre’s draft notification revising Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) norms would lead to opening no-development zones for economic and tourism activities and reducing the CRZ limit along rivers and thus will have a significant impact on the coastal belt. The state authorities need to maintain the status quo or ensure that the changes in the rules have least impact on the state’s coastal environment and ecology. The fishing community has already expressed its opposition to the new rules, so also have other sections. The ideal solution in such a situation would have been to take the stakeholders along and allay their fears. Ever since the draft rules were notified, cross sections of society had put forth to the government that the proposed rules were not environment-friendly and might cause further damage to it. Experts have said that the draft rules would weaken the existing regulations and will open the ecologically sensitive coastline for real estate development and tourism. Environmentalists have accused the government of preparing the draft rules without public consultation and with the intention of providing benefits to the industry. There are serious fears that if the central government goes ahead with the draft rules, the coastline will undergo a complete change to the detriment of environment. The state government’s unilateral move to send suggestions without holding wider consultations has been severely criticized and the exercise has been dubbed as anti-people and anti-environment. As wide ranging suggestions have been made to allow construction of foreshore facilities like ports, harbours, jetties, wharves, dry dock, mooring dolphins, slipway bridges and sea links, including maintenance and cleaning of waterways, channels and ports by dredging, desilting in CRZ-IB area, it would be better that the government take the GCZMA and other left-out stakeholders into confidence. The government should explore the possibility of amending the suggestions by taking the experts and other stakeholders into confidence or adding more suggestions on the basis of their inputs. Past attempts to impose rules on the people without a rational basis have led to violations and protests in reaction to their enforcement.