Drastic drop in No-Development Zone land: BMC

The annual report gives a status check on various environmental aspects within the city,worked on by a number of BMC departments and compiled by the civic air quality control laboratory in Khar. Newsline has a copy of this year’s report which is due to be released this week.

The 2009-10 report states that 19,289 hectare falls under the NDZ under the provisions of Section 56 and 57 of the Development Control Rules. The report for 2010-11 puts the same reservation at 13,671 hectare. This means that more than 5,600 hectare under NDZ has been dereserved since 2009.

Land is reserved under various categories under the BMC’s 20-year Development Plan (DP). However,land — when required — is dereserved by getting the permission of the civic improvements committee. In the revised DP,the BMC has asked the consultants preparing it to explore the options of opening up land under NDZ for development.

Top officials in the DP department said they were unaware of such a huge dereservation of NDZ land over the past one to one-and-a-half years. Both the present improvements committee chairman Bhalchandra Shirshat and former chairman Manoj Kotak said the committee has received only minor dereservation proposals. “The maximum area that the committee might have dereserved could be 300-400 hectare. But such a huge quantum could not be dereserved,” said Shirshat.

Urban Development Department Principal Secretary T C Benjamin said the new Coastal Regulation Zone norms could not have led to such a quantum of reduction. “Recently,a lot of mangrove land around Gorai,Marve,Madh areas was brought out of forest land and afforestation was carried out. The difference could be because of that,but it still seems too large,” he said.

However,Municipal Commissioner Subodh Kumar said it is impossible for such a reduction to have taken place. “There is no question about it. It has to be an error,” he said.