Accusing Delhi Development Authority (DDA) of acting at the behest of private builders lobby, Delhi Home Minister Satyendar Jain said on Tuesday that DDA is amending the Master Plan of Delhi (MPD) to provide “undue benefit” to the private builders. In a letter to Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu, Jain said that the amendment proposed by the DDA aims to keep public, semi-public and transportation plots owned by the Government agencies outside the purview of the Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) policy.
A salient feature of the policy is significantly higher Floor Area Ratio (FAR) of 400 in the TOD zone to incentivise development by enabling vertical construction that is required to address shortage of land availability.
Requesting Naidu to intervene in the matter in “public interest”, Jain has asked him to include the Delhi Government and the DMRC in the discussion before modifying Delhi’s Master Plan based on proposed TOD regulations.
“It has been learnt that at the behest of private builders lobby, DDA has proposed to amend the MPD-2021 guidelines to limit the benefits of TOD policy only to the private builders and not to extend same development control norms i.e. higher FAR etc to transportation and public and semi-public facility plots owned/operated by the Government agencies — including the Government of Delhi, the Government of India, DDA, Municipal Corporations, DMRC etc — on the ground that the development control norms for such plots shall be as per the use of premises prescribed in lease conditions,” Jain wrote in his letter to Naidu.
As per the TOD policy, the zone up to 500 metres on both sides of the Metro corridor will have mix land use with a blend of residential, commercial and institutional development. If the Government owned plots are excluded from the policy, it would mean that Government entities will not be able to take up any development works under new TOD norms.
“It would result in gross underutilisation of transportation and other public facility assets owned and operated by the Delhi Government, the Central Government, DMRC etc. Such a lopsided approach on the part of DDA will undermine the very basic objective of TOD policy for Delhi to address the growing problems of pollution, congestion and shortage of homes for the poor and middle class in the city,” Jain further said in the letter.