Chandigarh may soon have 11-floor apartment buildings

Confirming it, Ajoy Kumar Sinha, Chandigarh’s finance secretary and chief administrator of the Capital Project, said: “The urban planning department has been asked to examine the issue of allowing 11 floors in residential apartments to come up in the IT Park area.”

The UT administration is considering to allow 11 floors in multistorey residential apartments to come up in peripheral areas of the city.

A view of Sector 17 plaza in Chandigarh.(Karun Sharma/HT Photo)

Confirming it, Ajoy Kumar Sinha, UT finance secretary and chief administrator of the Capital Project, said: “The urban planning department has been asked to examine the issue of allowing 11 floors in residential apartments to come up in the IT Park area.” Currently, the plan is for seven-storey apartment buildings.

The Chandigarh Housing Board (CHB) plans to construct around 1,100 flats at Rajiv Gandhi Chandigarh Technology Park, on the land received back from Parsvnath Developers in 2015. These apartments are to be constructed for the general public. There is also a proposal for constructing high-end flats for government officers of Punjab, Haryana and UT in the area.

CHB has 123 acres of land in IT Park, with 20 sites for residential development.The CHB will be constructing the houses for general public at two of these sites. The rest of the sites will be offered to different builders for development.

All these projects stand to gain if the UT’s proposal for allowing more floors goes through.

In the first phase of the city’s development, only four-storey apartment buildings were allowed to come (for both the CHB and cooperative group housing societies). Currently, the highest residential apartment building is in the CHB’s Sector-63 project: Six floors (five floors and stilt parking).

The administration’s reasoning goes that only a few metres away from the Chandigarh border, Punjab and Haryana have allowed residential apartment buildings with more number of floors.

In the UT, under the Capital of Punjab (Development and Regulation) Act and rules made thereunder, the chief administrator, Capital Project, is authorised the sanctioning of zoning plans. It is under the zoning plans that the height/elevation of the buildings is stipulated. The urban planning development is the nodal agency for preparing zoning plans.

Categorically stating that more number of floors are being considered only for new projects and in peripheral areas, Sinha said that for older and core areas there is no such proposal.