BMC releases revised draft development plan

The revision follows a road survey and specifies whether proposed roads are to be deleted from or retained in the draft.

There will no longer be a 9.15-metre-wide road cutting across three residential buildings at Pali Hill in Bandra; the proposed road has been deleted from the city’s draft development plan (DP) 2034, which the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has revised and released as phase 2.

Hindustan Times

The revision follows a road survey and specifies whether proposed roads are to be deleted from or retained in the draft. Citizens were up in arms against proposed roads that would have cut across their buildings and religious structures, and Pali Hill residents led a protest against the plan. Following this, most of the proposed roads at Pali Hill now stand deleted or re-aligned.

Similarly, a 9.15-meter-wide road proposed at Mt Mary Convent School in Bandra has also been deleted from the revised draft, which was submitted in the group leaders meeting at the BMC late on Tuesday.

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The ward-wise draft will be made available on the BMC’s website on January 7. Citizens can write to the BMC with their observations on the survey by January 31. A senior BMC civic official said, “We will also be uploading the format that citizens should follow to send their observations.” Properties that received an intimation of disapproval (IOD) before February 25, 2015 and have a proposed road in the revised draft have also been asked to notify the civic body before January, 31. The BMC will also upload a ward-wise corrected designation survey, or phase 1 with rectifications, to its website.

In the revised draft, BMC has also highlighted the number of trees or mangroves that will be affected by the proposed roads. For instance, though there was staunch opposition to a proposed road near St Anne’s School, which would affect 15 trees, it has been retained – albeit re-aligned – in the revision.

On Wednesday, the BMC also issued a clarification on phase 1 of its revised plan, saying there the report has been ‘misinterpreted’. In the note, the BMC continued to maintain that the designations were based on the sanctioned development plan (SDP), 1991. Therefore, “no reservations are proposed but only erroneous designations are corrected,” the clarification read.