The Times of India     06.09.2012

Consultant’s lax approach flayed in Ranchi master plan meeting

RANCHI: Consultancy company Feedback
has come in for criticism from town planning experts, infrastructure
development companies and government officials for its half-hearted
approach on preparing the master plan for the state capital.A meeting was called by the state urban development department and the Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) which was attended by director census operations Sunil Kumar Barnwal,
deputy commissioner of Ranchi Vinay Choubey, deputy mayor Ajay Nath
Shahdeo and other senior officers.

Almost everyone present in the first
interactive meeting criticized the consultants for not doing a detailed
study of the town.While an officer from the Housing and Urban Development Corporation
(Hudco) pointed out the fault in drainage system, deputy chief
executive officer of the RMC Gopalji Tiwary challenged the number of
slums pointed out in the master plan.

“Your team has not done the basic
survey before making the draft master plan. You have just picked up the
number from the official document of the Union urban development
department which is not correct,” said Tiwary.The consultant
admitted that they had not done the survey. “This is just a draft report
and we will make necessary inclusions to address the concerns raised by
the participants during the discussion,” said an official of the
consultancy firm.Town planning experts further pointed out that
the plan of constructing an inner ring road in a densely populated city
like Ranchi was not viable. “The city is already congested and the
roads are very narrow.

If we think of making an inner ring road, the
dream of a planned city will never become a reality. Instead of trying
to make changes within the city, the concentration should be on
developing colonies along the under construction ring road,” said a town
planner.The deputy mayor suggested to the consultant to
include details on water supply system for the city so that the proposed
master plan which aims to cover basic need till 2037 do not fall flat.
“We have very poor experience of the past and our last master plan of
1983 failed miserably because of basic loopholes. My request is that all
those mistakes should be rectified,” said the deputy mayor adding that
the consultant should also include New Ranchi area in the master plan.