COIMBATORE: The city needs to wait for a few more months for its new masterplan to take final shape. According to the district authorities, the final draft of the masterplan, which lays the roadmap for the development of Coimbatore, would be ready only by January 2025.
Local Planning Authority (LPA) officials said they were flooded with more than 3,000 objections and suggestions for the draft masterplan. “We are scrutinising each and every petition submitted by stakeholders, including the public. It will take two months to complete the scrutiny. After that, we will incorporate the suggestions and send the revised masterplan to the Directorate of Town and Country Planning, which will go through the document and release the final draft. Altogether, it will take four to five months,’’ said a senior LPA official.
The two-volume, 600-page draft masterplan was released in February this year. The masterplan touched every aspect of the city, from proposed population, water requirement, electricity demand-supply gap, housing requirements, road infrastructure and industrial growth. The elaborate document prepared by the LPA also had recommendations to address most of the problems faced by the city and suggestions to state govt to examine certain issues in detail.
The authorities then invited feedback for the draft plan, for which the deadline was fixed as May 15. Though it has been two months since the deadline is over, there is no sign of a final draft.
Gugan Ilango, president, Confederation of Real Estate Developers Associations of India (Credai), Coimbatore, said state govt should publish the final master plan at the earliest. “The masterplan is the road map for development of the city. And development will take place only after the final plan is published.”
Officials said the number of petitions received was much higher than the feedback received for the masterplans of other cities. “We never expected 3,000 petitions,”’ said an official.
Strikingly, there were a large number of petitions from Sulur and Annur taluks in rural Coimbatore, requesting the LPA to reclassify agricultural lands, enabling them to be used for residential, commercial and industrial purposes. Officials suspect that this could be the handiwork of housing promoters, who want to convert farmlands into real estate.
“We are scrutinizing the applications to know whether the petitions were submitted by the landowners or real estate promoters,” the official said.
The authorities are also conducting field inspections to ascertain if the requests were genuine and valid. After detailed verification, the masterplan with modifications would be sent to the office of the Directorate of Town and Country Planning in Chennai. It would then take another four to five months for the final masterplan to be released.
