‘BMC acquired only 16% open spaces reserved under development plan’

The state government is planning to create more open spaces under a new development plan (DP) that would come into force in 2014. However, the civic body managed to acquire only 16% of the major open spaces reserved under the present DP, which ends in 2013.

The BMC’s DP department recently conducted a random survey. “The overall implementation of the DP would be 9-16 %. Though the BMC has claimed that it acquired open spaces, most of them are encroached. We are going to conduct another survey that will reveal the DP’s exact implementation,” said a senior official in the DP department. Another senior civic official said: “The poor implementation was because of the BMC’s casual approach.”

According to official figures, the BMC acquired only 44.67 lakh sq m over the past 10 years. This is merely 4.3% of the reserved plots. For recreation grounds, the BMC could acquire 52.92 lakh sq m, or 16.5%. For playgrounds, it acquired 14.3 lakh sq m, or 14.3%.

As the tenure of the present DP is about to end, owners of lands reserved for developing public amenities are asking the civic body to purchase the plots as per the market value.

“The BMC could not acquire the plots reserved for public amenities, because of a lack of administrative will,” said Ashish Shelar, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s group leader in the BMC. “The state government, too, interferes often and changes the reservation of plots.”