Master plan to be notified soon: UT to HC

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 1

Years after Le Corbusier conceived Chandigarh as a post-war “Garden City” without vertical and high-rise buildings, the Chandigarh Administration today told the Punjab and Haryana High Court that the Chandigarh Master Plan— 2031 would soon be notified. The approval for its notification had already been conveyed by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs. The Ministry of Urban Development, too, had given its concurrence.

As the case came up for resumed hearing, a Division Bench of the High Court was also told that the areas of disagreement for the preparation of an inter-state regional plan were required to be narrowed down. Appearing before the Bench, Assistant Solicitor-General of India Chetan Mittal added that the state governments of Punjab and Haryana, along with the UT Administration, were required to work out the modalities for the preparation of the plan.
Taking up the matter, the Bench of Justice Satish Kumar Mittal and Justice Harinder Singh Sidhu fixed May 7 as the next date of hearing after asking the UT, along with Punjab and Haryana, to put their heads together for coming out with the plan.

The UT Administration has already claimed that connectivity issues between Punjab and Chandigarh have largely been addressed in the Chandigarh Master Plan — 2031. In the 26th meeting of the coordination committee for the development of Chandigarh and its periphery held on March 27, the UT Finance Secretary claimed the resolution of connectivity issues. The Chief Architect, too, stated that there was a broad agreement on the issue of coordinated development for the Chandigarh region. There was need for preparing a functional plan to ensure connectivity in the entire region, along with provision for physical infrastructure in an integrated manner.

The broad decisions taken at the meeting were that since the overall development of Chandigarh was in the interests of all state governments, the whole matter was required to be looked into in a holistic manner, particularly when all concerned were in agreement to the concept of the formation of a regional plan.

It was also decided that the state governments of Punjab and Haryana, along with the Chandigarh Administration, should immediately initiate a dialogue process and come out with agreeable contours for early finalisation of the regional plan within a definite time frame. The Secretary, Urban Development, concluded by stating that the state governments and the UT together were required to work out the modalities for the inter-state regional plan.