45-year-old MRTP Act under review

Other members in the committee,headed by Landge,are deputy director town planning Sunil Sukhlikar,former director town planning A R Patharkar,former deputy director of town planning Y S Kulkarni,former joint director B V Kolhatkar and architects Anand Patwardhan and Rajiv Raje.

“Rapid urbanisation calls for changes in the act at all stages. We as a committee with our experience have been asked to give our recommendations and submit the same to the government,” said Landge. The committee,besides exchanging individual opinions,will have to ready a consolidated report by the end of the year. The next meeting will be held on April 8. The committee will meet twice a month. The state had also initiated efforts to amend the act focusing on town planning to speed up urban development and achieve progress as done in Gujarat. Landge said this was one of the aspects of the meeting.

There is provision of TP scheme in the Act. The scheme allows an alternate mechanism to pool in land for urban development activities at a faster pace,without taking recourse to compulsory acquisition of land and benefits the land owners financially. The scheme is conceptualised as a joint venture between the local authority and the land owners,who voluntary agree to pool in their land,redistribute the reconstituted plots among themselves and share the development cost.

After the development,the price of the same plots goes up and the owners get more benefits despite the area of their plots being reduced. Feeling the urgency to put the scheme to effective use,the state government had a year ago issued an ordinance to amend the TP scheme and send it to the Centre for its consent.