A formal cancellation notification of the draft development plan (DP) of August 2021 was issued by the Pune Metropolitan Region Development Authority (PMRDA) on Friday.
Reportedly, “The official notification has been issued and sent to the government press for publication in the state gazette,” said Yogesh Mhase, PMRDA commissioner.
In April this year, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis approved the cancellation of the DP plan, following which the Bombay High Court dismissed the petitions against the DP draft. PMRDA has now completed the closure process by issuing the cancellation notification.
The DP draft plan process took PMRDA eight years and involved 6,000 consultations and represented a development of the next 20 years.
And even after several villages were merged into the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), the problems of these villages are still not solved. The residents haven’t seen much development because there is no Draft Development Plan (DP) for these areas.
Also, the draft DP received numerous objections over the land reservations and future proposals, and consequently, the Bombay HC also stopped its implementation. So the state directed PMRDA to bring a fresh draft plan.
PMRDA commissioner Mhase has informed that the current Regional Plan will continue till a new draft development plan is prepared. “A new structural plan will be published soon, and it will focus on land reservations for the future and road infrastructure,” Mhase added.
However, the new plan is expected to cater for Pune’s emerging challenges, such as rapid urbanisation, infrastructure mismatch, and help in addressing the inconvenient transport while taking into account residents’ demands and recommendations.
