The Master Plan for Mysuru-Nanjangud Local Planning Area 2031, which had come under criticism for allegedly favouring real estate sharks and developers, will be implemented with slight modifications.
Also called the City Development Plan (CDP), it was unveiled in 2012 by the BJP government. It received about 1,880 public objections and the Congress kept it in abeyance following criticisms over its recommendations. Consequently, the city was without a master plan for three years and scores of projects were held up by the Mysuru Urban Development Authority (MUDA) in the absence of zoning regulations.
MUDA chairman K.R. Mohan Kumar, who attended a meeting chaired by the Chief Minister Siddaramaiah in Bengaluru on Monday, told The Hindu that the proposed plan would be implemented with slight modifications as the planning exercise had gone through all legal processes.
The meeting was attended by local MLAs apart from senior officials from the Urban Development Department, Director, Country and Town Planning etc who surmised that the government could not backtrack on it now. The then government had given a preliminary approval on August 1, 2012, fresh objections were invited and over 400 of the were incorporated in the revised document and hence it had to be notified, the MUDA chairman said.
“Though the Chief Minister was for scrapping the plan and start afresh as sought by a few NGOs, the legal opinion was in favour of its notification,” Mr. Mohan Kumar said.
NGOs such as the Mysore Grahakara Parishat has faulted the plan for not eliciting the views of the local stakeholders besides flaying it for making projections based on faulty statistics. The Builders Association of India and the CREDAI had expressed disappointment that the plan had frozen the Floor Area Ratio which was impeding the city’s growth and driven up housing cost. “Not withstanding the objections, the plan cannot be rescinded nor can the government order for a fresh CDP at this juncture though there was scope for incorporating modifications to the plan,” Mr. Mohan Kumar said. A follow-up meeting is slated for September 10 to discuss the modifications for incorporation in the final plan, he added.
