Give time till August 31 to accept feedback on Draft Master Plan, BJP urges VMRDA

‘The document should be uploaded in Telugu also’

The BJP leaders have asked the Visakhapatnam Metropolitan Region Development Authority (VMRDA) to give an extra 45 days, till August 31, for communicating objections and suggestions on the Draft Master Plan-2041.

Addressing the media here on Saturday, former BJP MLA P. Vishnu Kumar Raju said that the 30 days period given is insufficient, keeping the COVID-19 pandemic in view. The deadline expires on July 15.

“These plans affect the lives of over 7.5 million people living in the districts of Visakhapatnam and Vizianagaram and are prepared for the next 30 years. Hence sufficient time should be given for the people to respond,” he said.

MLC P.V.N. Madhav pointed out that the usual and scientific approach is that a perspective plan is first prepared and approved by the government and based on the same a draft master plan has to prepared for approval. But in this case the VMRDA has hurriedly published both the Draft Perspective Plan and the Draft Master Plan simultaneously during the pandemic period. “It was notified on June 16, when partial curfew was still in force,” he said.

The BJP leaders, including M. Raveendra and Suhasini Anand, said that no physical copies in form for books were made available and the documents and plans were only displayed online, which is difficult for common man to download and read due to the huge file size. Moreover, the plans are also not clear, they said.

The BJP leaders pointed out that the VMRDA was still uploading information and this is confusing the people. Moreover, several documents such as zoning and development have not been uploaded in full, they said.

They said that the document is uploaded in English language and demanded that it be uploaded in Telugu also.

The colour coding in some documents are wrongly depicted, as hills are shown as agricultural lands and vice-versa. These discrepancies need to be corrected and uploaded for better understanding, said Mr. Raju.

There is also no documents showing survey numbers, sub-divisions and extents of land being lost by citizens, which is important for people to understand to raise their objections, the BJP leaders said.

Before approving the present draft master plan there is a need to review the status of roads. Most of the roads proposed in earlier master plans were dropped in the subsequent master plans. The planners need to give a serious thought to this aspect to avoid a similar situation for the present plan, said Mr. Madhav.

According to Mr. Vishnu Kumar Raju, Visakhapatnam city is a north-south oriented linear city, but while planning the road network this important factor, seems to have been missed out. Visakhapatnam has many major roads running parallel to each other like Beach Road, National Highway, Anakapalle- Anandapuram Road, Kothavalasa –Vizianagaram Road. Connecting these roads there are many roads from east to west direction which are narrow. The master plan-2041 instead of proposing to widen these roads to 80 or 100 feet has proposed many green field roads unnecessarily. Most of these new roads cannot be formed on ground due to hurdles and further forming these will lead to huge financial costs and human suffering. A ground inspection report related all major roads proposed has to be prepared and only practically possible roads should be depicted in the plan, said Mr. Raju and Madhav.

According to them, the VMRDA seems to have superimposed the plans on the Google Map. A copy of the superimposed plan on Google has be made public for better understanding on the new proposed roads, expansion of roads and zoning details, they said.

Source: Read Full Article