NEW DELHI: Union urban development minister Kamal Nath has described 60% of Delhi'sMaster Plan 2021 as "irrelevant", saying such plans cannot be made sitting in airconditioned rooms. He has set his sights on a review that will anyway be happening as a routine process. Touted as a document that would deliver the city from its woes in February 2007 when it was notified, it's now being trashed. A close look at what it had envisaged, however, reveals that critical steps and processes that it was supposed to initiate were allowed to languish. It was a failure of execution.
Nath's statement comes at a time when the capital is gearing up for the municipal polls next year. The Master Plan has to be reviewed every five years and will be scrutinized next year. Delhi Development Authority has already constituted sub-groups with officials and experts to carry out the review. Each sub-group has been assigned a sector like housing, transportation, land use plan and urban design. Lieutenant Governor Tejendra Khanna, who is chairman of the Authority, has been monitoring the preparations for the review. The DDA has sought the views of stakeholders and the public.
So where has the planning process gone wrong? Master Plan 2021 had identified unauthorised colonies as a serious human problem which needs to be addressed urgently with a regularization policy. There are 1639 colonies awaiting regularization in the city.
Just last week chief minister Sheila Dikshti met the urban development minister to seek relaxation in the procedures involved in regularization as laid out in the guidelines of the urban development ministry to expedite the process. Delhi government will follow up with a formal proposal to the Centre. Every time elections are round the corner, the issue of regularization of the colonies is revived, to be put in the cold storage once the votes have been cast.
The urban development ministry had to extend the Delhi Laws (Special Provisions) Act, 2011 that lapses on December 31 by one more year. This had been enacted as a temporary arrangement to give protection from demolition and sealing to encroachments and unauthorized constructions by slum-dwellers and jhuggi-jhompri clusters, hawkers and urban street vendors, unauthorized colonies and village abadi area (including urban villages) till the agencies concerned, like DDA, MCD and Delhi government, made the necessary polices in keeping with Master Plan 2021 to regulate the same. The Law was introduced by the Centre first in 2006 but even today these special areas are waiting for the regulations.
The MPD had also laid down that drafting of 17 zonal plans would be completed within one year. But the ground reality is that not only did the plans not shape up one year after the notification. According to sources in the DDA, they were under the impression that NDMC would make the plan but now the Authority has been assigned the task. However, sources in the NDMC said that making zonal plans is the mandate of the DDA and the Council was simply asked to make recommendations and amalgamate.
The most critical stage of planning emphasized in the Master Plan was the Local Area Plan seen as the backbone of planning on the ground with the involvement of all stakeholders.
These plans too are yet to become a reality. DDA has finally assigned the task to prepare plans for 32 municipal wards out of 272 as an experiment to five organizations, including INTACH and School of Planning & Architecture. Preparations of the plans is under way.
Nath's statement comes at a time when the capital is gearing up for the municipal polls next year. The Master Plan has to be reviewed every five years and will be scrutinized next year. Delhi Development Authority has already constituted sub-groups with officials and experts to carry out the review. Each sub-group has been assigned a sector like housing, transportation, land use plan and urban design. Lieutenant Governor Tejendra Khanna, who is chairman of the Authority, has been monitoring the preparations for the review. The DDA has sought the views of stakeholders and the public.
So where has the planning process gone wrong? Master Plan 2021 had identified unauthorised colonies as a serious human problem which needs to be addressed urgently with a regularization policy. There are 1639 colonies awaiting regularization in the city.
Just last week chief minister Sheila Dikshti met the urban development minister to seek relaxation in the procedures involved in regularization as laid out in the guidelines of the urban development ministry to expedite the process. Delhi government will follow up with a formal proposal to the Centre. Every time elections are round the corner, the issue of regularization of the colonies is revived, to be put in the cold storage once the votes have been cast.
The urban development ministry had to extend the Delhi Laws (Special Provisions) Act, 2011 that lapses on December 31 by one more year. This had been enacted as a temporary arrangement to give protection from demolition and sealing to encroachments and unauthorized constructions by slum-dwellers and jhuggi-jhompri clusters, hawkers and urban street vendors, unauthorized colonies and village abadi area (including urban villages) till the agencies concerned, like DDA, MCD and Delhi government, made the necessary polices in keeping with Master Plan 2021 to regulate the same. The Law was introduced by the Centre first in 2006 but even today these special areas are waiting for the regulations.
The MPD had also laid down that drafting of 17 zonal plans would be completed within one year. But the ground reality is that not only did the plans not shape up one year after the notification. According to sources in the DDA, they were under the impression that NDMC would make the plan but now the Authority has been assigned the task. However, sources in the NDMC said that making zonal plans is the mandate of the DDA and the Council was simply asked to make recommendations and amalgamate.
The most critical stage of planning emphasized in the Master Plan was the Local Area Plan seen as the backbone of planning on the ground with the involvement of all stakeholders.
These plans too are yet to become a reality. DDA has finally assigned the task to prepare plans for 32 municipal wards out of 272 as an experiment to five organizations, including INTACH and School of Planning & Architecture. Preparations of the plans is under way.
No comments:
Post a Comment