Mumbai
Several citizen activists, architects and NGOs from the
city who had criticized BMC's Development Plan (DP) 2034 published in February
this year, have started meeting senior BMC officials involved in the revision
process of the DP.
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Sources
said that BMC chief Ajoy Mehta felt it was important for the civic
administration to understand the reasons for which activists and experts had
criticized the published DP.
Since
several days, various groups have been meeting former bureaucrat Ramanath Jha
who was recently appointed to oversee the revision process.
BMC is
said to have completed one phase of the revision work. The digitization of
errors from nearly 60,000 suggestions objections is complete. A committee
working on the revision process to first get the apparent errors out of the way.
A
senior BMC official confirmed this. “While we are already aware of people's
grievances and suggestions, we wanted to understand the grievances of these
experts in detail. These meetings are be ing held so that everything is in
place before it is revised and published.“
Activist
Nayana Kathpalia, who met Jha, said that they came back feeling very reassured
after meeting. “We discussed with him about open space ratio in the Development
Plan published in February which was completely unac ceptable as it mentioned
open space as 2sq meter per person.We do not want any compromise on the open
space ratio in Mumbai and told him about it.Besides, the earlier published DP
draft had classified all Open Space (OS) under OS category only instead of it
being classified as Recreational Ground (RG), Playground (PG), Parks (P) and
Gardens (G) like was in the DP 1991. By classifying it separately , it would
give a clear indication about the open space rather than it being left to
interpretation. We also briefly discussed the Street Vendors Act which we told
him must be a part of the DP . It was nice he was open to our suggestions.“
Architect
P K Das, who also met Jha, said, “There was a discussion on several issues from
open spaces to affordable housing. Also, we explained to him about how the
earlier DP did not have a chapter on affordable housing. It's important that a
development plan assess the quality of life which it will generate too. We are
optimistic and hopeful after the recent meeting with Jha that the revised DP
will look into the needs, demands and aspirations of people of Mumbai.“
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