State govt allows PMRDA to skip social impact assessment for ring road

It is mandatory to carry out the social impact assessment before starting land acquisition for executing any mega project

To speed up the inner ring project proposed by the Pune Metropolitan Region Development Authority (PMRDA), the Maharashtra government has offered the planning authority a relaxation to avoid the social impact assessment stage and instead start the land acquisition process.

For Pune city, two outer ring road projects are proposed (REPRESENTATIVE IMAGE)

It is mandatory to carry out the social impact assessment before starting land acquisition for executing any mega project, as per the Land Acquisition Act. However, at the same time, the State has the discretion to ask any institution to skip the social impact assessment stage to speed up the project.

Now, on Tuesday Maharashtra government issued the circular for it and asked the PMRDA to skip the social impact assessment and start the land acquisition as a priority.

Ramdas Jagtap, PMRDA Public Relations Officer (PRO) said, “Maharashtra government had given an exemption for not doing social impact assessment. The circular was published on 8th September and PMRDA received it on Tuesday evening.”

For Pune city, two outer ring road projects are proposed. The first project is being executed by the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) for which land acquisition also started for the same on the western part of the city. The second ring road has been proposed by PMRDA. The PMRDA’s ring road is 82 Km in length, and it will require 700 hectares of land. Already the PMRDA has planned the Town Planning schemes around this ring road which would help to get land acquisition free of cost for the ring road project.