Mayor Sudheer Shetty Kannur said here on Wednesday that the Mangaluru City Corporation (MCC) council will discuss the draft of the Master Plan III to Mangaluru Local Planning Area before the Mangaluru Urban Development Authority (MUDA) finalises the draft and sends it to the government for approval.
Raising the matter at the monthly meeting of the council, Abdul Rauf, Congress councillor of Milagres ward, said that the MCC should review the draft, under preparation, before it reaches the government.
The modifications required to the draft should be suggested now itself as otherwise once the final draft is approved the corporation will have to bear the brunt for the mistakes if any and “unrealistic” zonal regulations.
For example, he said that the zonal regulations in the master plan mentions that a particular road should be widened 10m. But in reality roads cannot be widened beyond a certain limit in some localities. The MUDA failed to take note of those aspects while it prepared earlier versions of the master plan. The councillors should know the contents of the draft and discuss about them thoroughly. The master plan should be realistic and scientific.
Conceding with Mr. Rauf, a former Mayor and Congress councillor M. Shashidhar Shetty said that the draft of the master plan should be tabled before the council.
It may be mentioned here that the master plan II came into effect on October 1, 2009. It was revised in 2010 and the same was notified by the State government on May 5, 2011. It was again revised and notified in October, 2011.
The master plan III should have been in place in 2019. A MUDA official told Urban Development Minister B.S. Suresh at a meeting in the MCC office on November 24 that the draft of master plan III will be ready by March, 2024.
When the Mayor wanted to know the progress of the preparation of the draft at the meeting of the council on Wednesday, none of the MUDA representatives were present.
Later, the Mayor said that the MUDA will be asked to present the draft to the council before finalising it.
