Karnataka - Bangalore   

Thomas panel to meet soon

Divya Ramamurthi

Meeting will look into complaints against and suggestions to Master Plan

BANGALORE: The independent committee headed by P.S.S Thomas, a retired civil servant, will meet in the first week of August to look into the suggestions and complaints made by the people about the Bangalore Development Authority's (BDA) Comprehensive Draft Master Plan 2015.

The meeting will be the first sitting of the committee since it was constituted last month. It includes Rebeiro, chief town planner from New Delhi, M.N. Srihari, traffic engineering expert, V.M. Hegde, Director of Town Planning, Suresh Heblikar, environmentalist, and members from the Town Planning Society and the Institute of Architecture. A report from the committee is expected by the end of September.

The BDA has so far received over 300 suggestions or complaints from the people, and officials of the organisation say the nature of these is unknown. "We have been passing them onto the committee as and when we get them. It would be unfair for us to read and review it at this stage," says the BDA official.

The committee with representation by one government official will review the comments and suggest modifications to the Master Plan based on them. A key area will be in deciding what will happen to the encroachments that have cropped up along the green belt.

"While we are not looking to regularise the encroachments, we want to develop a plan to deal with them," says M.N. Vidyashankar, BDA Commissioner.

The Comprehensive Draft Plan in 1995 had projected urbanisation till the year 2011 for a population of 70 lakhs. For the local planning area of 1,306 sq km, the CDP had projected an urban sprawl of 564 sq km and a green belt area of 742 sq km. The new master plan envisages urbanisation to the extent of 812 sq km for a projected population of 88.5 lakhs by 2015.

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