Master Plan for Delhi-2041 hanging fire for over 4 yrs, housing minister cites technical issues

New Delhi: Union Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs Manohar Lal Khattar remains non-committal about the implementation of the draft Master Plan for Delhi-2041 (MPD-2041), which was sent to the ministry for notification almost a year and a half ago.

The draft plan, which was put up for public scrutiny in June 2020, proposes to make New Delhi a 24×7 city, and promote transit-oriented and greenfield development to provide affordable housing in the national capital, among other potential benefits.

However, the plan, which is part of the 100-day agenda of the Narendra Modi-led government’s third term, has been hanging fire due to provisions related to the development of greenfield areas, according to sources in the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA).

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Speaking to mediapersons Monday about the ministry’s achievements during Modi government 3.0’s first 100 days in office, Khattar did not give a timeframe for its implementation, despite MPD-2041 being one of the top goals of the agenda. 

“The MPD-2041 is under consultation within various departments. There are some issues due to the technical provisions (in the plan), and some rules have been changed, because of which we have received several comments from the public. We are in the process of examining those suggestions; the plan will be notified soon,” Khattar said.

The minister added that work on the draft Regional Plan-2041 (RP-2041), which is aimed at sustainable development in the National Capital Region (NCR) and was sent to the ministry last year for notification, is also underway.

The draft RP-2041, which was put up for public scrutiny in December 2021, has been pending before the ministry since last year.

The delay in notifying MPD-2041 has stalled the implementation of key policies, such as land pooling (notified first in 2013 and revised in 2018 to meet the city’s housing requirements), green development area norms in rural villages, and in-situ slum rehabilitation, among others.

According to senior Delhi Development Authority (DDA) officials, major changes have been proposed in the policy on the lines of the “Gujarat Model” for aggregation of land for future development.

With the Delhi assembly elections scheduled for early 2025, landowners in urbanised villages have stepped up demands for the immediate notification of MPD-2041. 

Implementation of the land pooling policy was one of the key promises made by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) during the Delhi municipal elections in 2022 and this year’s Lok Sabha elections. 

“We have waited for over four years for the master plan so that we can get the right value for our land through land pooling. This policy has remained stalled for over a decade now, and we landowners have been at the receiving end, as we are unable to get the right value for our land. We want the Centre to immediately notify the policy,” Bhupender Bazad, president of Delhi Dehat Vikas Manch’s master plan committee, told ThePrint. 

Paras Tyagi, co-founder of Centre for Youth Culture Law and Environment, a non-profit organisation working with landowners in Delhi, said, “The delay in the implementation of the land pooling policy has led to rampant unauthorised development in several areas where the policy was supposed to be implemented. Due to the delay, people have not been able to sell their land parcels, as they are not getting the right value of their land.”

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Development work hampered due to delay

The delay in the notification of MPD-2041 has halted development work and the process of giving ownership to lakhs of residents in around 100 unauthorised colonies as part of the Pradhan Mantri-Unauthorised Colonies in Delhi Awas Adhikar Yojana (PM-UDAY) scheme.

Launched in 2019 ahead of the assembly elections in Delhi, the scheme was put on hold in about 100-odd unauthorised colonies as they were located in Zone ‘O’ (floodplain) of MPD-2021, where construction activity is prohibited.

To provide relief to these residents, the DDA has proposed to delineate Zone ‘O’. In the draft MPD-2041, the DDA has proposed splitting the 9933.36 hectares of Zone ‘O’ into two parts: river zone (active floodplain) and riverfront (regulated). The river zone was to be spread over 6,295 hectares and the regulated riverfront over 3,638 hectares.

DDA, which is the main landowning agency in Delhi, has put forth an ambitious plan to redevelop over 10 slum clusters to house about 26,000 families as part of MPD-2041. 

While the DDA tendered these projects multiple times, it received muted responses from developers.

“Some changes were made to push for in-situ redevelopment. These projects will be taken up after the MPD-2041 is notified,” a senior DDA official told ThePrint on the condition of anonymity.

(Edited by Radifah Kabir)

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