The Indian Express 10.08.2012
Civic panel defers proposal on sops for plot owners
The civic body’s improvement committee once again deferred a proposal to give incentives to owners of private plots reserved for civic amenities.
At present, owners of private plots reserved for schools are allowed to build a private school on the plot and in turn reserve 15 per cent of the total seats in the school for municipal school students.
The civic administration has now proposed that of the total area of the reserved plot, the private owners can be allowed to develop a private school in 50 per cent of the area in lieu of building and handing over a municipal school in the rest 50 per cent of the reserved plot.In turn, the private owners will be granted the FSI prevailing for the structure, said officials.
Congress corporator and improvement committee member Mohsin Haider said, “The proposal is only meant to pave the way for private player entry in the civic education space. The private owners might build a municipal school in the same premises as private school. Slowly when the BMC will fail to efficiently run its own school, it will be handed over to private parties.”
Samajwadi Party’s Ashraf Azmi said, “The proposal is an eye-wash. No real benefit will result from this except the private parties getting easier entry to build bigger schools in reserved plots.”
Officials claim that the new proposal would mean better infrastructure and increased facilities for the children. Under the earlier norm although the private players would promise 15 per cent seats in private schools, the municipal school children could not afford the school fees due to which the seats would lie vacant.
“We are bringing this change in the policy to follow the recommendations made by the Right to Education (RTE) act. As per the stipulated classroom and students’ ratio, we need 580 more classrooms. Hence we need the change in policy as civic body does not have enough infrastructures to build schools,” said Milin Sawant, DMC, Improvements Committee.
Improvement Committee chairman and BJP corporator Ram Barot said the proposal would be brought up for discussion again after relevant data and other details are provided to all committee members.
