Panaji: While the Supreme Court said Goa’s ecosystem would be destroyed and the state would become like a second Mumbai, it heard the private forest case and ordered status quo in the matter.This observation was made during a hearing before a division bench of Justice BV Nagarathna and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan. Justice Nagaratna said Goa would become like a second Mumbai.“For now, the diversion has been halted. Let’s continue that order. Until this issue is considered, let’s maintain the status quo. Let’s continue with non-forest activities. Look, the entire coastal zone will be destroyed. It’s a fragile area, an ecosystem.” The entire ecosystem will be destroyed. Justice Nagaratna said, “Goa will become like another Mumbai”, stating how Goa is changing then, adding, “Goans are tired of these New Year programmes.”At a hearing on private forests in South Carolina, Senior Advocate Norma Alvarez said the Private Forests Commission has demarcated 8.5 square kilometers as definitive forest and another large area as interim forest. She said the review committee decided to invalidate the entire exercise and start over. “And in the process, almost 90 percent of the forest survey numbers that were identified and finalized were removed,” Alvarez said. She said they submitted a five-part final report. The Goa Foundation has challenged the NGT’s September 23, 2023 judgment.“The NGT has accepted the state government’s affidavit that it treats the entire expert committee report as interim. There is no order to that effect, it is just an affidavit. The NGT said that if the state government makes a statement on the affidavit, the petitioner will have to prove that the statement is wrong.” We said that if there is an order that the entire report is not acceptable, that is what is written in the affidavit. “We do not accept these two reports,” Alvarez said.He said the NGT had decided to accept the statement of the state government based on the affidavit and the methodology and report had been accepted by the NGT.“Methodology is also a challenge. This was our second challenge. The methodology was very strange. They took digital survey numbers, digitized the survey plans of the two expert committee reports and placed them on the Forest Survey of India’s green cover map.” Currently, the green cover map is based on satellite imagery,” Alvarez said.She said anything that did not match the FSI map in the expert committee report was removed without looking at it in the first place. In the process, a large number of confirmed investigation numbers were deleted.Mr. Alvarez said that when he informed the SC that these final survey numbers were removed, meaning that development could take place, the SC passed an interim order on March 3 last year not to issue conversion sanad for any final survey number.Alvarez said the survey number can only be used for a forest if it is identified as a private forest, and can be used for other purposes if it is no longer a private forest. Alvarez said that 18 political parties have been given conversion sanads and conversion sanads of 19 parties are pending.