Priyanka1tamta / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0). Cropped.
More than 6,000 of the roughly 13,400 objections to Bhopal's draft Master Plan 2047 come from one area: the villages around the Upper Lake, where farmers fear the plan will lock up their fields in the name of conservation.
The Town and Country Planning department will begin hearing the objections on November 16 at the new Huzur tehsil office in Lalghati. Officials expect the process to take about 90 days, and people will be able to join online. About 3,000 duplicate submissions were removed from more than 16,000 received by the October 25 deadline.
The draft puts farmland in 66 catchment villages into Bhojtal conservation zones BIZ-1 and BIZ-2 and marks some land for riverfront, forest and green belt use. Farmers from areas such as Neelbad, Ratibad and Bhauri say the 1995 master plan and the withdrawn 2031 draft kept this land agricultural. Farmer Anokhi Singh Patel and the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh want the zones removed, land use left as farming and gram sabhas held in all 66 villages to seek consent.
In the city, more than 4,000 objections target provisions that would allow commercial activity in residential areas on payment of fees. Residents say this will bring shops into quiet colonies, and they have already petitioned the Supreme Court on the issue. In Misrod, people oppose a proposed 45-metre road through old houses and a temple.
The same draft offers projects along a 51-km growth corridor from Narmadapuram Road to Indore Road an extra floor area ratio of 1.0 free of cost. Restrictions at the city's edge, flexibility on its new spine: who pays to protect the lake is now a question for the hearing committee.
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