50 groups ally to send Mumbai DP views
Citizen groups, including NGOs, academic institutions, slum-dwellers, fishing communities and street vendors, will be presenting their letters en masse to Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation
Days before the deadline, close to 50 citizen groups are expected to submit their suggestions/objections on the draft Development Plan (DP) 2034 on July 20.
The citizen groups, including NGOs, academic institutions, slum-dwellers, fishing communities and street vendors, will be presenting their letters en masse to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).
The Hamara Shehar Mumbai Abhiyaan (HSMA), which will be conducting the drive, will also be sending eight “non-negotiable demands” to the BMC on the same day. The HSMA has been conducting consultative workshops on the plan for the past two months.
The citizens’ groups involved in the en masse drive include Pratham, Akshara Foundation, Stree Mukti Sanghatana, Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action (YUVA) and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS).
The revised DP was released on May 28, following which, it has been put out for public scrutiny for 60 days. The final date for submitting suggestions/objections is July 29, 2016.
BMC, till Thursday, has received 2,192 number of suggestions/objections. Of these, 386 are from the island city, 587 from the eastern and 1,059 from the western suburbs.
Hussain Indorewala, assistant professor at the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi College of Architecture, who has been collaborating with HSMA said the group, had undertaken a similar drive when the earlier DP was released.
“We had submitted more than 20,000 objections to the BMC. We are bringing the opinions of all the stakeholders we have interacted with on the same platform. The plan has huge issues that have to be addressed before it is passed,” Indorewala said.
Following a public outcry over the earlier draft, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis had asked the BMC to revise the blueprint.
HSMA, in its non-negotiable demands, will be asking for inclusion of the concept of local area plans (LAPs) for slums and urban villages, an idea presented in the earlier draft.
It will also be demanding that slums be marked as special zones of social interest for its development. HSMA has also asked for allocating more amenities in areas that have large number of low-income populations.
“We are calling it non-negotiable because we do not want the plan to be passed without these demands,” said Purva Dewoolkar from HSMA.
BMC receives few objections
In comparison to 2,192 suggestions and objections, the BMC had received 50,000 suggestions and objections for its earlier draft released in February 2015
Officials say the lesser number of objections can be attributed to the BMC releasing the revised draft in four phases earlier
A senior official said, “Many citizens had already filed their observations when the plan was released in phases earlier.”
What is the city’s development plan?
The development plan (DP) is a 20-year blueprint of the city’s social and physical infrastructure
According to the revised DP 2034, only 31% of the plans for open spaces made in DP 1991 were implemented
This means less than one-third of the open spaces shown in the DP were created or maintained in the city
Other sectors such as education (36%) and housing (34%) fared better in terms of implementation. However, only 33% of the overall plan was implemented
In case of the DP released in 1964, only 6.93% of the open spaces planned were created and 18% of the plans made for all sectors were executed
The revised DP 2014-34 was released recently. Citizens can send their suggestions and objections by July 29.