Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar:
The Supreme Court has directed the state administration through Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar Municipal Corporation (CSMC) to submit the rough draft of city development plans prepared by the two separate officers. The next hearing has been scheduled to be held after two weeks.
As reported earlier, the state government constituted a Development Plan (DP) unit to prepare the rough draft of the plan including the existing land use (ELU) and proposed land use (PLU) maps and it submitted them to the CSMC on October 31, 2023. However, the officer on special duty (OSD) appointed by the government prepared the PLU maps again and published the rough draft of the plan on March 6. Hence it has been ordered to submit both the rough drafts including maps to the Apex Court.
First, the DP Unit headed by Dr Raza Khan was ordered to prepare an integrated city development plan (comprising the old DP and the new DP of the extended part of the old city). In the last two years, Khan prepared the ELU and PLU and submitted them to the municipal corporation. Later on, taking support of a High Court order, the state government appointed deputy director Shrikant Deshmukh as OSD to submit the development plan. Accordingly, he submitted the rough draft to the CSMC in three months and also published it on March 6. The objections and comments upon it have been collected for the last month.
Meanwhile, a petition was filed in connection with the DP plan in the Supreme Court. When the petition came up for hearing on Monday, the Apex Court directed to submit the ELUs and the PLUs prepared by Khan and Deshmukh, said the sources.