Less than two months away from the December 31 deadline to implement the new Revised Master Plan (RMP) – 2031 which needs to be approved by the High Court as well, the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) is far away from even the first draft of the masterplan, sources said. This is likely to leave the city stuck with the outdated RMP-2015 for at least another six months. In fact, the RMP-2015 was to be phased out by the end of 2015, but was extended till December 2017 as the new plan was not ready.
Hearing a petition on the constitution of Metropolitan Planning Committee (MPC), High Court directed the State government not to approve RMP-2031 without its permission. Since the petitioner seeks the constitution of the MPC , which is tasked with planning for the city, and contends that the BDA is not the suitable body for the job, the very process of the planning is now up in the air.
In the run up to the Assembly polls, the State government was keen on approving the new master plan for the city within the deadline, as it wants to claim credit for RMP-2031, a process they initiated, sources said. The High Court directive, however, seems to have thrown a spanner in the works.
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'Will meet deadline'
In tune with the State government’s aspirations, the BDA claims that it will implement the RMP- 2031 within the December 2017 deadline convincing courts of the merits. “The draft of RMP- 2031 is almost complete. We will place the draft before the High Court within the December 2017 deadline and follow further directions of the court. We will work towards not extending RMP-2015 again and implement the new plan,” BDA Commissioner Rakesh Singh, Commissioner said.
However, sources said that the first draft of RMP-2031 is at least six weeks away from being ready, following which the BDA has to hold massive public consultations over the plan which is likely to take another two months.
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On whether the BDA is the right agency to plan for the city, the BDA and the State government have maintained that the development authority has been appointed as the secretariat of the BMPC and one of the many Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) under BMPC area, and the BDA-prepared RMP would be submitted to the BMPC for approval.
However, the petitioners argue that BMPC, in its present form, is dysfunctional and the constitution of the BMPC, which includes MLCs and MPs, is problematic. Petitioners argue that now is the opportunity to correct the anomalies in the city’s planning or lack of it thereof.
“Though RMP-2015 has been extended by two years and likely to be extended again, given the situation now, its implementation rate is less than 20%. The city should take a “plan holiday” for two years till 2020. A constitutionally sound process for planning should be put in place and then taken up,” argued N.S. Mukunda of Citizens Action Forum, a petitioner before the High Court.
Instead of the government trying to convince the courts, it is better that they do the constitutionally right thing by reconstituting the BMPC as per the 74th Amendment of the Constitution, pointed out urbanist Ashwin Mahesh.