GHAZIABAD: The Master Plan 2031, which cleared the GDA board hurdle on Saturday, is expected to come into effect by January end.
The three individual plans for Ghaziabad, Loni and Modinagar/Muradnagar were approved as one unified master plan for the entire Ghaziabad district. “The unification of the three plans was done to remove any hurdles in the planned development. The board finally gave its approval on Saturday,” GDA vice chairperson RK Singh said.
The plan will now be sent to the town and country planning department’s director and then the state government. “The state government will issue notification after which the master plan will come into effect,” Singh said.
The draft plan has been rejected by the board thrice before. In September, the Meerut divisional commissioner had put the draft on hold as the Duhai Namo Bharat station-cum-depot was not included in the transit-oriented development (TOD) zone.
In October, GDA had invited fresh objections from the public. About 72 objections were addressed, most over recreational green belt or green belt.
“The GDA heard the public objections till October 26 over the revised draft of the master plan. Residents sought to convert the green belts marked in the Master Plan 2013 as residential or mixed land use,” Singh said, adding that most of these areas were along the DME and highways.
“As per law, a 100-metre area on both sides of any expressway and 60 metres on both sides of state highways has to be a green belt. So, all such objections were disposed of as per norms,” he added.
The DME and the upcoming Delhi-Dehradun Expressway pass through Ghaziabad and, as per rule, a minimum of 15% of the total land area has to be earmarked as green or recreational green zone. “In the draft plan, 16.5% of the area has been marked as green belt,” Singh said.
Two special development areas (SDAs) and seven influence zones have been created along the 17km priority section of the Namo Bharat corridor.
The influence zone entails an area falling under a 1.5-km radius centred at each of the seven RRTS stations. SDAs will include 250 hectares of land near Guldhar and 400 hectares around Duhai along DME, which will emerge as new townships. The Master Plan 2031 has been made for a period of 20 years.
