Bengaluru: Thousands of objections, clarifications and suggestions flowed in against the Draft Revised Master Plan (RMP) - 2031, for which the deadline was Tuesday.
A senior BDA official said that by Tuesday evening, around 13,000 objections were received from individual citizens, civic organisations and forums and Resident Welfare Associations. "These objections and clarifications are through e-mails, physical letters, registered posts and normal posts."
He said, "The next step is for a committee, which has already been set up and is headed by BBMP Special Commissioner Vijayashankar, to study every case in detail and check if the objections are valid and feasible. It involves a lot of work. It will take some time to scrutinise each and every case and we expect to come out with clarifications in a month."
V. Ravichander, a civic evangelist, told Deccan Chronicle, “Majority of the objections filed would be about the cartographic errors of missing streets, public parks and buildings. Another would be about errors in existing land use, where commercial purpose is shown as residential and vice versa, objections about specific land use and many more major objections would have been filed.”
Sridhar Pabbisetty, CEO, Namma Bengaluru Foundation, said, "The most important issue with the proposed RMP 2031 is the role of the BDA in usurping the mandate of the Municipal Planning Committee (MPC). As per Art. 243 ZE of the Constitution and the Bengaluru Metropolitan Planning Committee Rules, 2013, it is the duty of the MPC to study the inputs provided by municipalities and accordingly prepare a master plan. Secondly, while the Draft Revised Master Plan 2031 (RMP-2031) is a voluminous document, its utility has been severely reduced due to various cartographic errors, inherent contradictions and invalid assumptions. Thirdly, lack of other parastatal service agencies’ agreement to the grandiose plans of the RMP is a major flaw. Not only are population figures wrongly calculated, the method used to arrive at this has not been disclosed."
AAP criticises govt
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) spokesman Shivakumar Chengalaraya took a dig at the urgency shown by the government in preparing the proposed Revised Master Plan (RMP) when citizens wanted the last date to file objections postponed.
“Since Bengaluru Development Minister K.J. George has a vested interest in the organisation preparing the report, AAP requests the government to provide some more time for people to study the draft plan and submit their objections. The government must discuss the plan with people in the presence of 28 MLAs and 198 corporators from the city before taking a decision," he said.
