On BMC’s priority list, correcting 1,000 major errors in city’s DP : Hindustan Times

8,000 FLAWS

BMC says mistakes such as wrongly marked buildings, missing structures will be tackled first

MUMBAI: Of the 8,344 errors pointed out by ward officers pointed in the draft development plan, after their survey, around 1,000 will be tackled first, as these pertain to structures that were marked incorrectly.

The plan for the city’s development had to be sent back to the drawing board after citizens and activists found it was riddled with several errors — roads cut t hrough homes, and structures, some of them iconic, were not marked in the draft plan at all.

On Thursday, civic chief Ajoy Mehta said all 8,344 errors will be corrected.

Sources said nearly 5,000 errors were technical ones. Another 1,000 involve structures that were marked incorrectly. Sources in the civic body said these major errors needed to be rectified first. An existing garden being marked as a residential building, a temple shown as a garden, are just some examples of what this list looks like.

The outline of 500 other structures has been i ncorrectly marked in the draft DP. The draft, for instance, had got the Gateway of India’s outline wrong.

Another 500 structures are entirely missing from the draft — essential services such as police stations, schools and hospitals did not figure in the plan.

A senior civic official said t hese major errors will be looked at on a priority basis.

Sources said close to 1,000 others are minor errors, whose correction has to be done in coordination with agencies such as the Slum Rehabilitation Authority, MMRDA , and Mhada.

When the DP was first publ i shed, t he Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) received more than 50,000 suggestions and objections to the draft development plan, following which it was sent back to be revised.

Ajoy Mehta had ordered ward officers to carry out onfield inspections, and not rely on satellite mapping alone.

The ward officers have been visiting spots with urban planners over the past few weeks.

Mehta also instructed them to publish the error-free draft phase wise on the civic body’s official website.