Patna Municipal Corporation. Telegraph picture

Patna, April 10: Finding several faults in the draft Master Plan 2021 for Patna five years after it was floated, the state urban development department has forwarded it to Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology University (CEPT) in Ahmedabad for rectifications.

Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) had floated the plan in 2006. It has not got the cabinet’s approval till now.

D.K. Shukla, the special secretary of the urban development department, said the proposed master plan had several defects. “All modern and scientific master plans are based on cadastral surveys and satellite imaging. The floated master plan did not fulfil those specifications. We have now sent the city development plan to CEPT, which has prepared master plans for several cities, including Hyderabad. The plan prepared by them will be modern, error-free and with area calculations based on longitude-altitude measures,” he told The Telegraph.

Shukla said the draft was expected to be prepared within the next three months. The cabinet will approve it thereafter. “The implementation of the proposals will start then,” Shukla said.

Mayor Afzal Imam said the master plan envisaged various plans for a big and beautiful Patna. “I was a councillor when the draft was approved by the PMC board. Many proposals and schemes are stuck as the master plan is still waiting government’s nod,” he said.

As per the master plan approved by the board, the present Patna urban area consisting of Patna municipal area, Danapur Nizamat, Danapur cantonment and their outgrowth is 135sqkm. It is projected to reach 333.2sqkm by 2021.

“The urban area has to grow to cater to the needs of a population of 46.97 lakh by 2021. The number of house holdings, which was estimated to be 3.75 lakh in 2001, will rise to 7.82 lakh. The existing planned residential area in Patna is 8,938 hectares. It is proposed that it should rise to 14,609.57 hectares. By 2021, the face of the city will change dramatically,” the plan read.

Its projections say there will be 8,014.7 hectares of residential area, 514.9 hectares of commercial area, 1,073.91 hectares of community area, over 3,000 hectares of green land, 1,709.44 hectares of internal roads and 88.74 hectares of infrastructure area by 2021. It proposed to reduce the existing land occupied by administrative offices of the government, education and medical institutions, religious, archaeological and historical sites, and graveyards and cremation ghats, from over 691 hectares at present to 68.24 hectares.

The area for clubs, cinemas, theatres, parks and playgrounds should be increased from 224 hectares to over 990 hectares, the draft plan said. There was a proposal for 60m wide roads in Patna occupying a space of over 681.98 hectares apart from 800 hectares of 30m and 20m wide roads.

The draft master plan also proposed a north-south activity corridor for public and semi-public use.