UP starts formulating new plan for NCR

[Harpreet Singh Guller]

UP starts formulating new plan for NCR
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Lucknow In order to avoid legal complications, the Uttar Pradesh
government has launched the process of formulating a new sub-regional
plan for areas falling in the National Capital Region, which include
Meerut, Gautam Budh Nagar, Ghaziabad, Baghpat and Bulandshahr
districts.
The sub-regional plan will define land use and other development
activities in the region in conformity with the NCR Regional
Plan-2021.

Besides this, the government will soon submit its Greater Noida Master
Plan 2021 to the NCR Planning Board for approval. The Authority has
already sent it to the government for approval from the state’s Chief
Town and Country Planner after making certain changes in the light of
observations made by the Allahabad High Court in its judgement last
month.

While quashing land acquisition in some villages, the High Court had
passed strictures on the Greater Noida Authority for undertaking
development without getting its master plan approved from the NCR
Planning Board. The court had stated that large portions of land,
which were earlier marked as industrial, had been changed into
residential arbitrarily and their allotment made. It had ordered that
no development activity would be carried out until the NCR Planning
Board’s approval was obtained.

Although the judgement pertained to petitions regarding land
acquisition in Greater Noida, development work has been going on at
other places also without the NCR Planning Board’s approval.
Consequently, the government wants to make a sub-regional plan for
areas falling in the NCR, and get it appoved from the NCR Planning
Board.

Under the NCR scheme of things, the partners states — which include
Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi — have to get their sub-
regional plans approved by the NCR Planning Board. After this, the
local development authorities have to draw up their own plans in
conformity with the sub-regional plan.

The Uttar Pradesh government had got its first sub-regional plan
passed in 1992, conforming to the NCR Regional Plan 1988. In view of
the changes that had taken placed over the years, the NCR Planning
Board came up with a new plan in 2005, which came to be known as the
Regional Plan-2021.

The states were expected to make their sub-regional plans accordingly,
and get these passed by the NCR Planning Board, but the Uttar Pradesh
government never did it. In the absence of a sub-regional plan, the
local development authorities kept working as they liked.

Even before the High Court judgement, Promilla Shanker, former head of
the state’s NCR Cell, had written to the state government in
September, stating that the master plan of theYamuna Expressway
Industrial Development Authority violated the NCR regional plan
approved by the NCR Planning Board in 2005.

The task of formulating the sub-regional plan has been given to the
Ghaziabad-based NCR Cell of the State government. Sources said it is
likely to be completed and submitted to the NCR Planning Board before
month-end.

Noida, Greater Noida, the Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development
Authority, and the development authorities of Ghaziabad, Bulandshahar
and Meerut operate in the NCR region of Uttar Pradesh, which is spread
over 10,000 square km. As these authorities are working without an
approved sub-regional plan, it can lead to legal complications.

http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/up-starts-formulating-new-plan-for-ncr/873747/