The City Corporation is pushing for the inclusion of detailed maps with survey numbers in the new master plan, the preparatory work for which is progressing now at the office of the Chief Town Planner.
This will provide clarity to the public regarding the status of the land that they are going to buy or for which they are planning to apply for a building permit.
“We usually do not have detailed cadastral maps with detailed survey numbers of all wards along with the master plan. For the public too, this has caused a lot of inconveniences. Many a time, they buy a land without realising that it is part of the green zones, where construction is regulated, or that the land comes under an area of future road expansion. With accurate survey numbers on the mark, there will be a clear idea of the land use patterns of a particular plot,” says a Corporation official.
The Land Use Board survey, which had begun last year, is almost nearing completion. The Corporation is also waiting for the resurvey maps of five villages, for which it will have to pay an amount of ₹6 lakh to the Survey Department.
“Once the survey number is incorporated, we can also solve half the disputes regarding the rejection of building permit applications. Sometimes, officials too are in the wrong, when they reject certain applications, because the boundaries of the green and other prohibited zones are not clearly defined. Such situations can be avoided,” says the official.
The work on a new master plan for the city began earlier this year, with a scheduled completion time of one year. The decision on a new master plan came more than two years after the existing one was scrapped following widespread opposition to land use patterns in it.
Areas within Kattayikkonam, Mangottukonam, Attipra, and Kadakampally wards were marked as strategic zones in that master plan. The requests for building permits from these areas were being rejected after the draft master plan came into effect. This had led to widespread protests in the region.
