Bhubaneswar, Sept. 8: The local urban development authority has requested the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology University, Ahmedabad, to prepare a separate comprehensive development plan for nearly 351 villages that were brought within urban limits in 2011.

The Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT) University, which is a leader in providing consultancy in urban development sector, has agreed to start working on the project within the next two months.

The need to rope in CEPT University was felt after the Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) realised that the earlier comprehensive development plan (CDP),which was prepared by the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, for inclusion of 205 villages within its plan area limits, was not helping the residents.

The BDA felt that the earlier CDP was leading to a lot of confusion.

In 2010, IIT-Kharagpur prepared the first CDP for inclusion of 205 villages within the limits of Bhubaneswar. A year later in July, the Bhubaneswar Development Plan Area was increased to 1,110sqkm with the addition of 351 more villages.

“We have decided to approach the CEPT University as it has helped develop some really good master plans in Gujarat. In case of the earlier CDP prepared by IIT-Kharagpur, a road was proposed through Infocity. This appeared to be an impossible project,” said a senior BDA official.

The residents of Tamando, city outskirts, had filed petitions with the planning section of the BDA two months ago. They complained that Bhagwanpur had been listed as an industrial estate though there were no factories in the area.

Similarly, residents of Raghunathpur near Nandankanan came to the BDA office last week to file a complaint against a proposed master plan road which will affect at least 1,000 plot owners. The development authority now plans to change the alignment of the road. The BDA has also been getting complaints about wrong demarcation of zones in the CDP prepared by IIT, Kharagpur.

Chandrasekhar Pal, a resident of Old Town, said when he had applied to the BDA for a building plan approval in 1995, he was told that it was a water body.

However, when he made inquiries with the BDA this year, he learnt that the area was a heritage zone according to the first CDP. Curiously, BDA had approved nearly 29 buildings in the same area between 1995 and 2013.

“I think that the CDP was just an armchair exercise and the people concerned did not do enough groundwork while finalising the maps and various zones,” said Pal.

Vice-chairman of BDA Vishal Kumar Dev said: “Perhaps elaborate public hearing was not done while notifying the 2010 CDP. Hence, the suggestions of local residents could not be incorporated in the final document. This time, after the preliminary CDP draft is prepared by CEPT, we will give enough time to the people to take part in the process of the plan’s finalisation. This will ensure that complaints are not raised in future.”

However, for micro-level planning in the 2010 CDP, IIT-Kharagpur is already working on 14 zones. It has also submitted zonal development plans for four areas.

However, sources said that the plan might be changed since there were shortcomings in the CDP itself.

“With our inputs, the IIT team has already made changes in three out of four plans. To make the zonal plans more people-friendly, we are also planning to take help of D.G. Pandya, former chief town planner of Gujarat,” Dev said.

Pandya had also worked on the CDP for Sambalpur town. Urban planners say the CDP for Sambalpur is one of the best in the state.