With Gurugram civic area to grow, second corporation to be set up in Manesar by 2021

GURUGRAM: The municipal area of Gurugram will see a quantum jump by early 2021 with the establishment of a second civic corporation in Manesar, which CM Manohar Lal Khattar announced on Wednesday.

Khattar also said the Haryana government would begin work to develop a new city in the Gurugram region – part of the Panchgram plan announced earlier, of developing five new urban areas in Gurugram’s influence zone – though he did not specify its location or spell out a timeframe.

The CM made these announcements while inaugurating the ‘Gateway of Gurugram’ eagle-owl installation on MG Road, part of an exercise to beautify the city as well as give it a branding motif.

Senior officials in the government said work to set up a new municipal corporation in Manesar will begin in the next 15 days. Manesar, though one of India’s largest automobile manufacturing hubs, is still primarily a panchayat area.

As Gurugram’s urban limits have expanded over the years, several residential areas have come up outside the city’s civic area and overlap with the panchayat areas of Manesar.

This is an anomaly that needs to be corrected because residents of these areas don’t enjoy the same civic amenities as those in Gurugram’s municipal areas do.

While working to set up the new corporation, the government is also likely to bring more areas under the existing civic body, MCG. The Municipal Corporation of Manesar (MCM), as the new civic body is likely to be called, will be formed before the panchayat elections that are due in February 2021, the officials said.
With Gurugram civic area to grow, second corporation to be set up in Manesar by 2021Talking to TOI, a senior government official said, “There will be an increase in the area of Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) and there will also be a new MCM. Which areas of the city fall under which corporation will be taken on certain principles such as contiguity, access, reach of infrastructure and services. The MCM will be in place certainly by early next year.”

The official added, “The area is already urbanised and part of the gram sabha of several villages where so many residential societies have come up. These will be elevated to either MCG or MCM. With the formation of MCM, this area will automatically become a new city. Manesar as a city will include Manesar village and other villages around it, certainly parts of IMT Manesar (where the auto hub is located) as well.” Discussions are expected to revolve around which new sectors, Sector 80 onwards, would be included in MCM and which ones in MCG. “This will be done in the next 15 days. After this, the process of inviting objections and notifying the area limits will commence,” the official said.

Asked about the other aspect of the CM’s announcement – a “new Gurugram city” as Khattar put it – senior officials said it would be one of the five cities in the Panchgram project originally planned along the newly developed Kundli Manesar Palwal (KMP) expressway. “The idea is that instead of developing five cities, we will develop one city and then go for the other four,” a senior official told TOI. “It has a different timeline altogether (from the MCM) but is certainly on the anvil. Laws will have to be passed before the new city’s limits are defined. The question now is whether it should be developed along KMP or near Faridabad because it (Faridabad) gets contiguity with the new airport coming up at Jewar (in Greater Noida),” the official added.

MCG commissioner Vinay Pratap Singh said the boundaries of the new Manesar corporation are being worked out and a proposal will soon be sent to the state government.

“The proposal will be sent after Diwali. The decision has been made to form a new municipal corporation in Manesar comprising villages that have been urbanised in that area. This decision is for the betterment and development of new sectors beyond Kherki Daula. The area between the KMP and Northern Peripheral Road Dwarka Expressway is strategically very important since it is a mix of residential, commercial and industrial and a large part of the national highway also bisects it, making it a major urban centre,” he said. MCG had recently sent a proposal to include 39 villages within the corporation’s area. Sources said around 19 villages will be added to MCG and the remaining villages will be made a part of MCM. Decisions on the jurisdiction of the villages are being taken based on their geographical proximity to the corporation.