In developing UP’s State Capital Region, aim to decentralise growth

“Thus, it has been noticed that polarisation of economic activities in these two cities is resulting in imbalanced urban growth of the central region of Uttar Pradesh. Moreover, the Lucknow-Kanpur corridor can act as the counter magnet area to the National Capital Region of Delhi when it comes to getting investments. Therefore, it has been decided that we move ahead with the development of the State Capital Region (SCR) with the proposed inclusion of other smaller surrounding towns,” said a senior official of the Town and Urban Planning Department.

This “imbalance” can be ascertained just from the fact that state capital Lucknow, which is spread over 2,528 sq km has about 46 lakh population as per the 2011 census; and Kanpur Nagar, spread over, 3155 sq km is home to nearly the same number of people.

Since the population figure is based on the 2011 census, these two districts, at present, must be housing at least 1.5 crore people together, officials said.

In contrast, neighbouring districts like Hardoi has more than double the area of 5,986 sq km and a population of about 40 lakh. Sitapur, spread over 5,742 sq km has a population of about 44.83 lakh.

Therefore, the proposed State Capital Region (SCR) will cover eight districts, including Lucknow and Kanpur Nagar, which will be spread over 34,000 sq km and will have a combined population of 3 crore. The other six districts in the proposed SCR are Hardoi, Sitapur, Unnao, Barabanki, Raebareli and Kanpur Dehat.

To execute the plan so that there is a planned urbanisation of the SCR with evenly distributed  economic activities and population concentration till 2047, the UP government is planning to float a global tender for consultation.

“Our focus is on evolving harmonized policies for control of land use, development of infrastructure along with identification of pre-urban areas to avoid future haphazard development. As a result, the consultant will be appointed, whose tasks would include demand assessment, identification of issues, projected requirements, development strategy and preparation of draft proposal on GIS-based map of the region with sector-wise data analysis,” another official involved in the execution of the plan said.

“The consultant will be required to study relevant regional planning legislations and institutional framework of both the state and central governments, including that of the NCR region. It will be required to prepare a base map of the proposed area, which would include forest cover, water bodies, revenue roads, existing urbanised areas, industrial corridors, and transport networks along with environmentally sensitive zones like wetlands, wildlife habitats, sanctuaries, water sheds etc,” the official said.

The blueprint would also include educational, medical and health infrastructure projects, areas of archaeological, historical, cultural as well as religious and tourism importance in the region etc, the official added.

After the Request for Expression of Interest was issued last month, seven companies came forward.

“However, only two companies could qualify the pre-qualification criteria – the SMEC with Surbana Juron and LEA Associate South Asia Pvt Ltd… We wanted to see the interest shown by these firms, and it is clear that many foreign firms want to participate but could not as they did not fulfil the required criteria. We now plan to float RFP (Request for Proposal) in the next fortnight and hope to get bids from at least 18 companies,” said a senior official.