In a move that shocked municipalities across Maharashtra and ends unwarranted changes
The state has, and rightly too, decided to take away the civic bodies’ right to change Development Plans. A development plan is a 20-year land use blueprint. Now, when the time has come for most of the DPs to be revised, this new declaration has shocked most municipalities.
The move has restricted the civic bodies from changing public reservations on their own. The reason for this new-found restriction is that in recent changes that had been made in the DPs, maximum of them were made to give way to private residential projects. The process of revising the DP for Mumbai is underway and is expected to come up for final approval of the state government. this year itself. Over the past one month, the state government has cleared the revised DPs for 40 municipalities, with five more slated to be cleared by April. Some of the cities and towns whose DPs have been sanctioned include Pimpri-Chinchwad, Nashik, Sangli, Ichalkaranji and Pandarpur.
Usually a DP is reviewed and revised once in every two decades wherein various reservations, such as municipal schools, hospitals, open spaces, and roads are done. The reviewing includes revision of zoning of land into commercial, residential and industrial plots.
For a DP to get approved, it has to go from three stages – the first one being - preparing the draft DP and getting it approved from the municipal corporation, the second one is - modifying it after the suggestions and objections and lastly getting the final sanction from the state government is required.
Reportedly, very often, by the time the DP reaches the state for final approval, there are numerous alterations already made in the DP in the second stage itself. Most of these alterations made are to benefit residential projects. And, the land earmarked for public amenities are compromised for this.
It has been reported that, as many as 300 changes were made to the draft DP of Sangli. There are certain norms on the basis of which a draft DP is prepared by an official from town planning department and it is for him to ensure that these fundamental norms are followed while preparing such a draft DP. Fundamental norms such as providing a playground for every 1,000 people are enforced so that the authorities don’t make changes without any basis and haphazardly.
The government has now issued orders preventing municipalities from changing reservations for public amenities, such as recreation grounds, playgrounds, maternity homes, fire brigade into residential ones. These developmental rules have also restricted the haphazard change of zoning from agricultural to residential which is done very swiftly in municipalities.
Another anomaly that had to be rectified by the state was the failure of municipalities to make provision for “obnoxious reservations.” These include slaughter houses, cremation grounds, sewage treatment plants and garbage dumping grounds that have an adverse impact on the value of adjoining land.
Reportedly, there have been cases when the width of the road/footpath has been reduced to make way for private residential projects. Such cases where public amenities are compromised for benefit of few developers have been restricted by the state government.
There are a total of 250 urban bodies in Maharashtra and the DPs of most of these places, including Mumbai, are up for revision. The revision process has in the past stretched over 15 years by when the land use on ground has changed drastically or has been encroached upon.
Last year, some changes were made in the rules by the state and it was made compulsory for local bodies to complete process of revising DPs within 3.5 years.