Draft Master Plan-2031: Ghaziabad Development Authority to address all objections

The draft Master Plan-2031 for which public objections were invited is likely to be operational in the last quarter of the current year. Officials of the Ghaziabad Development Authority (GDA) said that they received about 1,260 types of objections against the draft plan and a process is underway to resolve the objections in a fortnight’s time.

The GIS-based plan was put up in the last board meeting of the authority held in April and public objections were invited thereafter. Officials said that once the public objections are resolved, they will again take the draft plan to the board meeting scheduled in August.

“Thereafter, the final plan after making any further changes, if any, will be forwarded to the Uttar Pradesh government for a final approval. So, it is expected that the decision on the final plan may be taken up during the last quarter of this year. We will soon start the process for disposing of the objections received against the plan,” said Rajiv Ratan Sah, GDA town planner.

A master plan is a board layout of a city and clearly lays out different areas as per land uses such as residential, commercial and industrial, among others.

Officials said that the objections primarily include those in which local residents have requested for conversion of settlements to residential land use.

“Other objections include an increase in the number of greenbelts and road widths. Most of the objections relate to change of land use and these will be taken up one by one in presence of those who have filed the objections. All issues related to the draft plan will be considered at the objection disposal stage,” Sah added.

According to norms, nearly 45% of the land is earmarked in a master plan for residential usage while there is a provision of about 15% for greenbelts. Industrial land usage is about 5% while commercial usage is about 2% of the total area taken up in the plan.

Ghaziabad city covers 522 square kilometre (sqm) geographical area.

“The major issue that we see in the draft plan is non-provision of logistics and transport hubs which were proposed to be developed in the vicinity of Eastern Peripheral Expressway and Delhi Meerut Expressway and they are the need of the hour. A committee of the state government also approved the hubs but it has not been included in the draft plan. Further, industrial land usage is also reduced from 5% to about 3% and includes only the existing industrial areas,” said another town planner who is familiar with the developments related to the draft plan.

“Another issue that requires attention is about the prevalence of bazaars across the city. These should have been earmarked as commercial and their regularisation would have generated revenue for the authority,” the planner added further.

In terms of expansion in housing and allied activities, the draft plan includes two special development areas (SDAs) at Guldhar (250 hectares) and Duhai (400 hectares) on Delhi Meerut Road along the under-construction Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) network.

Under the SDAs, the authority has proposed planned hubs where planned development of residential, commercial and industrial activities will be carried out.