Special Township Notification of 2006 (Maharashtra Regional & Town Planning Act) : Some questions?

[Vijay Patil]

Tragedy of villages near industrial / IT parks is that they get overwhelmed by rapid changes caused by thousands of people working in the nearby IT parks. For example: (Village Hinjewadi, Village Maan near Hinjewadi IT Park, villages along Talawade IT park etc. etc.). Yes some people benefit one time by selling land (along side roads) to shops, hotels, petrol pumps etc. for a fortune but rest of villagers do not benefit in proportion to development around them. They are "excluded".

Specifically villages do NOT benefit from the increased demand for housing (thanks to large no. of employees working nearby). Why NOT? Somehow governance structure of a village (Gram Panchayat, Sarpanch etc. etc.) does NOT allow village to scale. Option of joining nearby Municipal corporation may increase price of land, but it is at the cost of autonomy for the village and benefits only few, who know how to bribe, not to mention poor services from Municipal corporation.

So WHAT IF villages could take advantage of  "Maharashtra Special township act" which if I understand correctly gives FULL autonomy to "builder" of the township, as long as it satisfies certain criteria. I came across article by Vinita Deshmukh and it seems most of the conditions could be satisfied by a village. Article is about how "special townships" are actually popular and some developers advertise their non-township projects as township projects.

So question is : If assuming "special townships" is a great thing, then why not let a company co-owned by villagers develop such township and benefit from all goodies offered by state govt and tie up their financial future with growth of nearby companies. Why NOT educate then and encourage this?

I wish I knew more about actual contents of the "Maharashtra Special township act" Vs "Gram Panchayat" to conclude the validity of this theory, so decided to share on this forum. Of course some external investment would be required to bring in funds for initial development, which villagers could negotiate with money bags (which otherwise would be spent on buying gold and flats in locality with non-existent infrastructure).

Any comments from someone who know real estate business ?

Reference:

http://www.moneylife.in/article/special-township-projects-rti-query-reveals-lack-of-monitoring-and-adherence-to-norms/19724.html

So, what is the mandatory requirement under the Special Townships scheme? It has to be an integrated township with space for residential, commercial, educational, amenity spaces, health facilities, parks, gardens, playgrounds, basic amenities and public utilities.

Infrastructure facilities specifically include:
(a) Water supply. The developer shall be required to develop a source for drinking water (excluding ground water source) or get a firm commitment from any water supply authority to meet the daily requirement of 140 litre per person a day. This excludes water required for fire-fighting and gardening. The storage capacity provided should be 1.5 times more than the requirement.
(b) Drainage and garbage disposal. Environment-friendly disposal of sewage and solid waste management as per the norms of the state pollution control boad.
(c) The developer shall ensure continuous and good quality power supply through captive power generation, or draw from the existing supply system.
(d) The developer must get an environment clearance certificate from the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF).
(e) Twenty per cent of the area is to be reserved for park/gardens/playgrounds. (f) Eco-friendly amenities like solar water heating.
(g) 60% of the area to be purely residential and out of the total floor area proposed to be utilized for residential development, 20% of the same to be used for residential tenements of 40 sq m. (h) Proper road area with the main road being 24 metres wide.

[Ashok Datar]

Very inteesting and needs to be pursued

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[Ranjit Gadgil]

Isn't that kind of what happened in Magarpatta City?

-- Ranjit