Vandana Ramnani Moneycontrol News
The Aravallis have to be delineated as natural conservation zones (NCZ) with limit on construction at 0.5 percent across the National Capital Region, it was decided at the NCRPB meeting held on Monday.
The basis of identifying the Aravallis will be the revenue term included in the MoEF Aravalli notification of 1992, gair mumkin pahar, which means uncultivable hill, as communicated to Haryana in the December 2016 meeting.
In addition, forest areas will have to be identified as per a Supreme Court order, it was decided at Monday’s meeting.
Accordingly, it was decided that the work on natural conservation zone (NCZ) delineation needs to be expeditiously finalised by NCR participating states, with verification of state revenue records and reports be submitted to the Board, sources said.
The meeting was chaired by housing and urban affairs minister Hardeep Singh Puri and was attended by Haryana CM Manoharlal Khattar, UP’s urban development minister Suresh Kumar Khanna, and Delhi’s public works department minister Satyendra Jain.
Among the resolutions approved in the meeting was one to include Shamli district in Western Uttar Pradesh in the NCR, making it the 24th district to be included in the NCR. The UP government had requested for inclusion of Shamli district in NCR.
It was also decided that NCR participating states need to expedite preparation of the sub-regional plans for newly added districts and complete the works by March 2018. The chairman clarified that all districts need to have SRP without which the NCRPB funding would not be possible for projects in these districts.
NCRPB may be considered as a financial institution (FI) meant to play pivotal role in infrastructure development of smart cities in NCR and its counter magnet areas. Government of Delhi was asked to expedite its approval for DPR on the Delhi-Meerut RRTS corridor, to help faster implementation of the project.
Addressing the meeting, Puri said that the NCR Planning Board is a unique example of inter-state and inter-agency coordination and regional development in the country and calls for special attention to address its needs and challenges. The minister emphasized on the need of detailing of a regional plan in the sub regional plans and said that provisions and policies of the regional plan are for betterment of the region as a whole and need to be followed in letter and spirit.
Puri indicated that while functional plans for NCR on economic development and drainage were released by the board in 2016, states need to be forthcoming in benefitting from the same and should prepare and implement projects and programmes in line with the same.
The urban affairs minister mentioned that interest rates offered by NCRPB for infrastructure development projects are the most attractive and the board had achieved a new feat in 2016-17 by disbursing loans of Rs 1,654 crores in a single year, the highest since its inception.
The minister added that during the first nine months of the current year, the board had already disbursed loans of Rs 1,276 crore and is planning to achieve a target of Rs 2,000 crore in this financial year. He urged state governments to continue taking benefit of the low interest rates offered by the board for facilitating physical and social infrastructure projects in their respective states.
It was also discussed that as the horizon year of the current regional plan was fast approaching, NCRPB has already initiated the preparation of the next regional plan with a horizon of another 20-25 years. Hence, NCR states should keenly participate and have a common vision for the development of the NCR.
The board also took stock of progress made in Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS), which was conceived by the NCRPB and is now being implemented by NCRTC. The chairman urged the participating states to come together and resolve their issues amicably for RRTS to become a trend-setter in the field of regional transport in the country.
It was agreed that a delineation study needs to be carried out for further inclusion/exclusion of districts to/from NCR and that states may expedite submission of their comments on broad parameters to be taken up for same.
Meanwhile, a Haryana government release said that ground truthing and revenue records will be matched to get the status of land in the Aravallis. “This will include Faridabad and Gurgaon. This information will be placed before NCRPB within three months,” sources said.
Haryana has been ground truthing its NCZ since August 2014, said environment experts.
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