UP starts formulating new plan for NCR

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.