Saturday, November 04, 2006

Delhi Sealing Of Shops

R o b b y S h a r m a 865, Block-B,Panki Kanpur-208020
Uttar Pradesh. INDIA
Freelance Research Scholar Ph:0-9235844258; 0-9415438326
Town & Country Planning Problems Email.sharmarobby@hotmail.com

To-
The Shri S.Jaipal Reddy 19-09-2006
Minister of Urban Development
Government of India

Dear Sir Sub:-regarding Sealing orders by the Supreme Court of India
& your effort of MAKING A MASTER PLAN
AS PER ILLEGAL DEVELOPMENTS an act
Opposite to your mandate of ensuring
DEVELOPMENT AS PER PLAN
Please refer to my earlier letter reproduced below, to which no heed has been paid by your department & now the Result is that the Supreme Court has again questioned the Revised Master Plan/Land-User proposals sought to be notified by you. In fact I am surprised that till now the Honorable Supreme Court has not questioned all the Revisions in the Delhi Master Plan effected by you under the Delhi Development Authority Act-1957.There is no provision in the D.D.A. Act for REVISION OF THE MASTER PLAN, You can make only minor amendments not effecting the basic structure of the Master Plan & the population density. What you have tried to do by revising the Master Plan is preposterous, You wish to condemn the City to a state of CHAOS for perpetuity. True that the Traders are agitated but they have to bear with you for a year or two & you can act on the lines mentioned below & gradually bring in rebuilding Schemes after repealing the old Schemes ensuring enough Commercial space within the Residential Zones while at the same time maintain the separation of Residential & Commercial areas of the Zone.& for this you can seek permission of the Supreme Court by giving all the reasons below. Please note that the Town Planning Acts were brought in To provide for DEVELOPMENT AS PER PLAN while what you are trying to do by Revising the Master Plan is to legalize all the illegal developments i.e you are MAKING A PLAN AS PER ILLEGAL DEVELOPMENTS i.e Opposite to the very Objects & reasons of the enactment of the Town Planning Acts including Delhi Development Authority Act. Thus by your action you wish to legalize & confirm the horrible hell like condition of Delhi & condemn the future generations to live in this hell. Please remember the Cities are supposed to have a perpetual existence.
Thanks.


Letter dated 21-02-2006 reproduced below:-


Dear Sirs 21-02-2006
Sub: Demolition & Sealing orders by various Courts/High Courts &
Supreme Court of India passed against illegal buildings, mis-user of
Land etc in Contravention of the Master Plan & building
Byelaws. Why ? & now What?
1. The various demolition orders passed against illegal buildings, by the High Court & Supreme Court are on account of the failures of the Town Planning Authorities.
2. After the British left & then after the personnel in the Town Planning departments, trained under the British, retired from the service, an acute shortage of Town planners (in the real sense) was felt in the Country & slowly but surely this department is now managed by people having no idea of Town planning laws at all.
3. The Schools of Planning & Architecture do not teach anything about the Town Planning laws which have been in force from time to time, they do not teach anything about the Fundamental Rights of the Citizens Town Dwellers, nothing about the Municipal laws, nothing about the Rights of Villagers over whose Lands these Ill taught Town planners later on plan their towns & Cities, they are not taught the fine points of the Land Acquisition Law (the Blackest & most brutal law in the Country). In fact they are not aware that in making their plans for Cities they have to first Plan for the Rehabilitation of the Villagers displaced by their Town Planning schemes. They are not aware how to protect the benefits of agrarian reforms given to the villagers in the various agrarian reform laws enacted by various states shortly after independence, these landmark reforms were nullified by these ill trained Town Planners & greedy Bureaucrats to the detriment of crores of villagers whose only fault was that their villages had fallen in to the trap of these expanding cities &the executive as well as the judiciary failed miserably to uphold their fundamental rights & the Cities kept on expanding patterned on the Cities of the affluent western Countries without taking in to account the poverty, the special needs of the people in general who populate them. In short what these Town Planners only know is about buildings & structures, their strengths & weaknesses, about drawings about Landscaping & that is about all.
4. No proper surveys are ever done. You are most likely to come across Planned Industrial areas for Textile goods in the vicinity of Villages where the majority are Dairymen then there will be Dairy farms in an area where the majority of villagers are proficient in shoe making (belonging to certain such castes who have practiced the occupation since ages). This can go on & on for thousands of pages.
5. In the context of the present problem it may suffice to state here that the problem of illegal buildings has become acute after the enactment of “Delhi Development Authority Act-in the late fifties “wherein the declared purpose was for tackling the problems of Town Planning resolutely & it was stated that the other Town Planning Authorities had failed miserably to do so without explaining how”. In actual fact the main & hidden aim of the Bureaucrats, in to getting the D.D.A Act & thereafter other laws of other States patterned on it like “Uttar Pradesh Urban Planning & Development Act-1973”, was to bring the vast Land resources of the Nagar Mahapalikas as also Lakhs of Hectares of Village common utility lands( under Gaon Sabha/Gaon Panchayat)from under the control of the elected ,Peoples Representatives, to under the control of the Bureaucrats of the Centre/State, so that they could make thousands of crores by mis-utilizing these lands, for their own vested interests. In short the Town Planning activity which also contributed a major portion of earnings of Municipalities was snatched from them & thus from the elected representatives.
6. It is matter of common knowledge that after the establishment of Urban Authorities, the situation in the Cities took a turn for the worse & there was rapid deterioration of civic life. These Authorities acquired Lakhs of Hectares of Land without being in a position to develop them & they could never keep pace with the demand & in fact they, The Government Authorities indulged in hoarding of land on a large scale like Sukkhi lala of Mother India(who used to hoard grain & ask for the honor of needy women in return for it)& releasing land in small quantities of schemes of a few acres each thus creating a artificial shortage of land & jacking up the prices every now & then, the release price bears no resemblance to the cost of acquisition & the increase in rates are wholly unjustified. Thus being denied from much needed Housing Land, the poor clustered around & settled in to slums on these vast & surplus Government Lands from where they are uprooted time & again, with the help of the Police by the brave hearted men of these Authorities as well as the High Courts & Supreme Courts who have never gone in to the root of the problem & simply harp on such & such Law. & never suggested a solution.
7. It will be interesting to note the Observations of the Supreme Court in three cases to reach the conclusion as to how we have failed after independence to plan for our poor who were much better of under the British in any case under them there was no dearth of housing sites. It was observed in the case of State of west Bengal v/s Terra Firma Investment & Trading private Ltd, reported in 1995SCC(1)125 “during the British period the villages were self sufficient & thus there was very little urban growth” ………..direction-10:-“the development of city or urban area is to last for centuries as such authorities are expected to anticipate & foresee the problems that may arise due to future growth of the Population”.
8. Now compare this with the Observation of the Supreme Court in the case of Olga Tellis & Ors v/s Bombay Municipal Corporation & ors reported in 1986 AIR, SC,180 & 1985SCC(3)545 & thereafter in the case of K. Chandru etc etc V/s State of Tamil Nadu reported in 1986AIR,Sc204 & 1985 SCC(3) 536 wherein it is observed “the massive migration of rural population to big Cities is because of lack of livelihood in the villages. If he is evicted from the slums, pavement in city then his very right to life is in jeopardy in violation of Article 21 & 19(1)(e) & (g).
9. The Supreme Court clearly said that Slums are due to the failure of the Authorities in implementing the Master Plan provisions. All this was merely lip service, the Supreme Court has failed abjectly to see that no plans have in fact ever been made for the poor in the first place & the Master Plans are Patterned on the western pattern & cater mainly to the elite.
10. In the case at hand in Delhi the authority simply failed to foresee that Commercial activity will overshadow all walks of life & in the earlier Schemes, no provision was made for this & instead in the entire Master Plan only about 2 to 3 % of the area was kept aside for Commercial Use while the demand has now stretched to more than 50 %. When these old Schemes were implemented in the forties & fifties & Sixties, the commercial needs of the residents were mainly restricted to a Barber Shop or two in the Sector, a tailor Shop or two, a grocery Shop or two, A kirana shop or two, a few Paan & Cigarette shops, a Tea shop, a eatery or two, then there was the Cobbler sitting under some tree & a few vegetable vendors. Thus in a Residential Sector only a small commercial center with twenty to thirty shops was made & this commercial center could not cope with the hunger for commercial space with the result that in the absence of timely rebuilding Schemes by the Authorities, the Residential properties soon got converted to Commercial ones with the result that on the one hand residential accommodation has become much dearer due to Commercial demand, hurting very badly the needy & on the other hand half of the Citizens have become thieves due to MISUSER & Illegal Buildings & there is traffic congestion on the roads, lack of parking space & generally CHAOS all around, with no solution in sight & the High Court & Supreme Court have ordered for the demolition/sealing of these Illegal buildings.
11. There is talk of the Delhi Government doing this & the Central Government doing that & of giving immunity to those who have done these illegal acts & in future not to allow any further violations(now everybody knows that this promises will be never be kept).
12. So the only solution is massive rebuilding Time bound (completed in two years) Schemes in these areas, the Old Schemes have to be revoked & in every 1000 acres of these Residential areas/Sectors, two or three parcels of 40 to 50 acres have to be selected & acquired & developed as Commercial Sectors, separated from purely residential sections by means of a thick strip of green cover & broad roads. In these Commercial Sections, Residential property owners may be given a choice to be partners in the fresh developments & if they disagree then Lands be acquired under the Land Acquisition Act-1894 with the application of section-17(4) & thereafter Commercial buildings with adequate parking facilities can come up & the existing (ordered to be demolished) Shops/Commercial ventures should be shifted there. Till such time these illegal Misusers to be allowed with heavy fine.
13. The Rent Control Act will have to be suspended in these areas for the Scheme to be successful. Multi story parking sites should be set aside & handed over to the Ex Armymen Organization/Soldier board etc to give rewarding alternative occupation to them on the one hand & on the other to save the public from the PARKING MAFIA of goonda elements who generally operate these Parking lots.
14. In future planning the present practice of confining residential plots to
residential uses as practiced by Authorities should be discontinued in view of
the present conditions wherein Commercial activity has taken over almost 50 % of all
towns & City areas all over the Country. Instead only a few uses like wholesale mandis , factories & other hazardous uses should be prohibited in residential Zones & Plots & all other uses including Commercial should be permitted, with reduced F.A.R. Even in small states like Goa it is being done the only restriction should be regarding front Set Back which should be double than in residential buildings with minimum of 25 feet( exemption from provisions of building line) & this set back should not be infringed in any case(keeping roads & footpath free from parking)& there should be no permanent boundary wall in front so that vehicles of visitors are accommodated inside the plot only. The Authority if it wishes to sell plots at double the Residential plot’s rates can do so & allow double the F.A.R. on purely Commercial plots.
15. In future Schemes there should always be a fixed lifespan of various schemes implemented in the City & the sanction of maps (other than public utility buildings) in these schemes should be only till this date. Thus if the Scheme is launched say in 2010, it should preferably have a lifespan of maximum 50 to 70 years & should be implemented within 5 years & thus the sanctioned maps should automatically expire in 2060 to 2080 at which time the Town Planning Authority can review & if needed extend them for 5 to 20 years or make a new rebuilding scheme when required, they will have to then pay only the depreciated value of the buildings in case of Acquisition. Thus speculation in land will vanish as a person buying the property in 2050 will only be able to get a sanction up to 2080, even in case where he wishes to pull down the old building & build a new one this will ensure that the prices of properties remain in check & in future need the rebuilding schemes can be easily made & thus the Hearts(Core areas) of Cities which are presently rotting can be brought back in to good health.

Thanks



(Robby Sharma)
Copy:-To Sri Mahesh Chander Mehta
5, Anandlok, Khelgaon Marg, New Delhi-110049
Phone-011-26255214