Robbing farmers to pamper casino barons!

The sun, the sea, and now the slots. Goa, India’s only legal casino playground, is quietly rewriting its own rules again. This time chief minister Pramod Sawant’s government isn’t merely tweaking licence fees or tightening audits. It is literally taking water away from farmers’ fields and handing prime irrigated land over to a gaming company. The numbers are not rumours. They are printed in black and white in the Official Gazette dated 26 February 2026.

Three lakh sixty-five thousand three hundred and thirty-eight square metres, roughly 3.65 lakh sqm, of Tillari command area land in Dhargalim, Pernem taluka, is being denotified. This is not barren scrub. This is fertile land solemnly notified under the Goa Command Area Development Act 1997 after the Rs 1,465-crore Tillari irrigation project, a joint Goa-Maharashtra effort, brought reliable water through the Left Bank and Right Bank Main Canals. The Command Area Development Board (CADB) reviewed and approved the scheme as recently as November 2024. Four months later the same land is suddenly declared “unsuitable” for irrigation.

The clear beneficiary is Delta Corp. Ltd., which has proposed an “integrated resort” featuring three hotels, a convention centre, multiplex, water park, retail spaces, banquet facilities, entertainment zones and, let us be honest, gaming floors. The company paid Rs 28 crore in conversion fees. The Water Resources Department’s separate demand of Rs 5.5 crore was waived because officials claimed the conversion fee was already “higher.” In plain language: pay the big fee, get the small one cancelled. The Investment Promotion Board fast-tracked the proposal, the cabinet nodded, and the CADB’s statutory role was quietly bypassed.

Aldona MLA Carlos Alvares Ferreira, who personally attended the CADB meeting that finalised the original irrigation scheme, has exposed the breach with surgical clarity. The 1997 Act demands identical procedures for notification and denotification: scheme preparation, public objections, CADB scrutiny, transparent justification. None of that occurred here. The cabinet simply overrode the very board the law empowered. Ferreira is correct: this is not administrative discretion; it is administrative arrogance. Sections 14, 16, and 17 of the Act do not hand the chief minister a magic wand to erase irrigation status overnight just because a private gaming firm wants a resort.

The opposition has called it “Casino City.” The government calls it “development.” Let us drop the euphemisms. Goa already hosts six offshore casino vessels and several land-based operations. Your government recently approved new public gambling rules that give the gaming commissioner sweeping powers to audit, inspect, suspend, and shut down violators. The 2026-27 budget proposes a 200% hike in new casino licence fees to discourage fresh entrants and keep the number of offshore vessels capped at six. These steps are presented as restraint and reform. Yet at the very same time prime command-area farmland is being cleared for an onshore integrated resort tied to India’s biggest listed casino operator. The contradiction is impossible to ignore.

Goa’s own agricultural policy has repeatedly warned against converting command-area land. The Tillari project exists precisely to protect and irrigate 14,521 hectares so North Goa farmers can grow two crops instead of one. That solemn promise is now being traded for water parks and banquet halls. Local residents in Dhargalim received no meaningful consultation. Environmental impact assessments were never meaningfully discussed in the assembly. The same BJP government that once campaigned vigorously against “casino culture” is now actively creating the physical infrastructure for its expansion.

The chief minister’s defence has been feeble. “No new offshore casinos,” you say. Yet the land being cleared is for an onshore entertainment hub that every informed observer knows will centre on gaming. The Rs 5.5 crore waiver is dismissed as “notional.” Then why demand it at all? The CADB met on 7 January 2026 and “decided” to omit the parcels, conveniently after the Investment Promotion Board had already recommended the project. The chronology reeks of embarrassment.

This is no isolated lapse. It fits a disturbing pattern. Goa’s tourism model has tilted heavily towards high-roller gambling rather than sustainable, community-rooted travel. Casinos bring revenue, yes. But when that revenue comes at the direct cost of irrigated farmland, drinking-water security and the agricultural identity that distinguishes Goa from Las Vegas, the trade-off is indefensible. Farmers in Pernem watch helplessly as their command-area protections evaporate while a single corporate proposal sails through every gate.

Mr. chief minister, the people of Goa deserve straight answers. Why are you prioritising a gaming conglomerate over the farmers whose land you promised to protect? Why are you overriding statutory safeguards designed to shield agriculture from exactly this kind of conversion? Why facilitate what looks unmistakably like the groundwork for another casino enclave when your own budget and rules pretend to curb expansion?

The February notification invites objections within 30 days. That window is open. Let the people of Dhargalim, farmers’ unions, environmental groups, and opposition parties flood the Command Area Development Board with detailed responses. Let them demand that any denotification follows the same rigorous, public process the original notification did. And if your government refuses transparency, the courts must intervene. The Goa Command Area Development Act is not window-dressing. It is a protective shield for the state’s agrarian soul. Stripping it away without genuine justification is not governance. It is expropriation by another name.

Goa is not for sale, chief minister. Not its beaches, not its identity and certainly not its farmlands.

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