Thiruvananthapuram: The civic body, which has been jittery towards formulation of master plan for the city owing to protests which had rocked previous council following the publication of draft master plan-2031, will have to up the ante with less than two months left for the deadline set by the state government to publish the master plan. As per the minutes of the meeting convened by LSG minister K T Jaleel on February 2, 2017, it was decided that Thiruvananthapuram will publish the master plan by August 31. 

The city corporation, which was also chosen for AMRUT scheme was late to act on the sub-scheme of AMRUT which aims at creating digital geo-referenced base maps and land use maps using geographical information system ( GIS) and master plan formulation for 500 cities which are selected as AMRUT cities. 

The Union ministry had laid down 16 point steps in the process of formulation of GIS master plan which include demarcation of mapping area, satellite data acquisition, GPS survey, ground truthing, GIS base map and so on. As of now, the city corporation which has tied up with town planning department has not progressed beyond the basic steps like preparation of base maps and ground truthing. The project officials say that the satellite maps are to be prepared by National Remote Sensing Centre and it is likely to be delayed as the Centre needs to do the task for most of the AMRUT cities. 

The city corporation and town planning wing, as part of ensuring transparency in provisions and schemes to be included in master plan, will publish survey numbers of each plot for which schemes would be proposed. The town planning department had earlier sought the assistance of Kerala State Remote Sensing and Environment Centre to obtain spatial data for the purpose, but it has not materialized. The updated land data in all wards of the city collected through remote sensing technique will be employed in preparation of new master plan. 

Many wards come under revenue villages where resurvey is either progressing or yet to be initiated. In such cases the plots designated for various schemes will have to be shown using old survey numbers. 

....