AMC to undertake task of preparing Development Plan in December!

Aurangabad, Oct 19:

The Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) is gearing up to prepare a

combined Development Plan of the city. To undertake the task, the state government would be shifting the base of 18 personnel from Nanded''s Development Plan (DP) unit, here, soon. The AMC will provide adequate space to set up the office. If all goes well, the unit members will start preparing the DP plan from December or January.

Earlier, the state government has ordered the AMC to prepare one combined plan comprising the development plan of the old city as well as an extended part of the town. It may be noted that the draft DP plan of the extended city was prepared by AMC four years ago. Presently, the matter regarding the plan is sub judice in the Supreme Court.

As per norms, the development plan of big cities is revised every 20 years. Now the government has reduced the period to ten years. The AMC had prepared the city development plan in 2001 and was approved as well. In 2015, the state government prepared the development plan of the fringe area comprising 28 villages on the outskirts of the city and handed it over to AMC. However, the members of ruling parties in the civic body made changes in the old DP plan as well as extended plan. However, the draft of DP comprising an extended part of the city had turned out to be controversial.

Eight petitions got submitted in the Aurangabad Bench of Bombay High Court stating that the AMC made changes in the plan despite having no authority to do so. The High Court ordered the scrapping of the plans prepared by the AMC. Later on, the matter went into the Apex Court. The then-mayor Tryambak Tupe urged the court to conduct a hearing considering it as the mayor''s petition. Later on, the AMC administration withdrew its name from the petition. Since the new mayors (Bapu Ghadamode and Nandkumar Ghodele), elected after Tupe, had submitted affidavits in the Supreme Court and seconded the decision of the old mayor (Tupe).

The role of government in the whole issue is noteworthy. The additional secretary of the Urban Development Department (UDD), Veena More, had issued a letter to the AMC commissioner in February 2020. The letter stated that the revised development plan of the old city stands approved in 2001, but the matter of the draft development plan of the extended city is sub judice.