Commissioner (Planning), DDA

Sub: Public Notice for Master Plan modification to “regularize” illegal IT Park at Metro Depot on riverbed

Dear Mr Jain,

My response to above-mentioned Public Notice is enclosed for your information. I request the following:

1. Disposal of my s.11A responses / suggestions mentioned in para-1, 3 and 6 – especially since I am told the draft Zonal Plan for riverbed has been circulated for expert comments and my responses about metro development, Sultangarhi scheme and DMP2021 ‘guidelines’, suggestions for community-owned eco-visitation and agriculture on riverbed and shifting of IT Park, Games Village, etc, to Safdarjang / Bawana-Narela / NCR, etc, and requests about assessment of compliance of court orders for clearance of riverbed encroachments are relevant to it and call for prior disposal.
2. Comment on matters mentioned in para-5, notably Delhi Secretariat – especially as former Commissioner Planning and co-awardee, Mr Ribeiro, has written to Secretary MoUD (IBC patron) in defence of the IBC award without countering my claim that Secretariat is illegal use on the riverbed.
3. Apropos para-6, action plan for DMP solution for the industries imbroglio – in which I perceive imminence of what I had hoped to pre-empt by outlining the option of compliance through statutory solution rather than closure and by making s.11A suggestion that government defend in public debate any other plan for compliance against this. In my letter of 06.10.04, I sought this of you after former PM and Left leaders courted arrest on the regularization demand, formalized in CPI-M politburo statement on 07.10.04. With Left taking on 12.10.04 at a huge rally and in UPA CC the anti-Master-Plan line, the window of opportunity that NCMP-DMP convergence provided to substantively rescue planned development from systematic subversion of recent years seems to have all but closed, leaving only our floundering profession to defend it, and by extension itself, with GATS imminent, against forces also subverting reform opportunities to force prototype reform patterns. I regret you have not responded to my NCMP-DMP notes and related correspondence, notably on industries, since failure of your predecessor (implicated in the DDA scam) to explicate in his affidavits the DMP solution does make our profession responsible not only for the situation that industries face but also for paradoxes of a government in a non-conforming Secretariat taking without jurisdiction action against non-conforming units, the Left calling for abandonment of a statute consistent with the original communist manifesto, highest-level discourse loudly wondering how to – while this public notice quietly does – “regularize” multi-level inequity.

In view of the enclosed response, etc, I would also like to comment on the draft Zonal Plan for the riverbed as an expert, if I may, rather than wait for the Public Notice, by when constructive comment may not be possible from my perspective of DMP imperatives for the riverbed.

Yours sincerely

Gita Dewan Verma / Planner 

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Secretary, MoUD

Sub: Public Notice for Master Plan modification to “regularize” illegal IT Park at Metro Depot on riverbed

Dear Mr Baijal,

My response to above-mentioned Public Notice is enclosed for your information since it makes reference to matters relating to your office, including prior responses, etc, and the suggestion for the instant case of scrutiny u/s.41(3) of legality and propriety of DDA decision to publish this Public Notice and its withdrawal for re-issuing after action u/s.29 and 30 to restore the site to DMP-2001 land use (‘Agriculture and Water Body’) from which change of land use for it to ‘Commercial (IT Park)’ is “proposed”.

I would appreciate it very much indeed if you would let me know whether or not you desire to take any action on any of these matters.

Thanking you and looking forward to hearing from you,

Yours sincerely

Gita Dewan Verma / Planner