Bhubaneswar: The development authority has begun the process to implement the city's first town planning scheme to provide a fresh and upscale outlook to a patch of 746 acres on the city outskirts.

To begin with the Bhubaneswar Development Authority has invited proposal from bidders to lay a road network in the proposed area. The work will be executed in phased manner, for which patches between Kalinga Nagar and Paikarapur are selected in the first phase.

The authorities will spend Rs 79.22 lakh in the process. "We have floated the tender to select a contractor for the job. The tendering process will be over in a month, and the selected bidder will get a nine-month time to finish its work," said the development body's vice-chairman Krishan Kumar.

Sources said the bidder for the work would first demarcate the land according to the plots' positions and lay the road network abiding by the scheme. "The bidder could use drone services to get the exact alignments for the road network," said an official.

The development had body first initiated the town planning scheme in 2015 and come up with a draft plan for the same in September 2016. The draft proposal was prepared based on the inputs and suggestions provided by the affected population of the area.

It has selected four mouzas - Sahajpur, Naragoda, Sijuput and Paikarapur - to gave those an overall development with better roads, drains and open spaces. Around 40 per cent of the land will be used to develop better infrastructure while the rest 60 per cent will be redeveloped and returned to landowners.

Sources said that about 3,000 landowners in the area would be benefited out of the scheme since they will get back their land in a planned manner with good roads, drains and other infrastructure. Initially, the officials had a tough time sensitising the local residents since many of them had thought that the government was evicting them from their lands.

"We had several meetings with landowners and people associated with the scheme. It is the most unplanned area located very near to the city. It will shortly come under the city's expansion plan and the ongoing scheme will help us and the landowners in the future. People are now aware of it," said another official.

Urban planners have also welcomed the decision.

"Bhubaneswar is one of the planned cities of the country, and it should be maintained accordingly. The city's boundary is expanding, and it will shortly reach out to the outskirts. It is a timely move to develop these outskirts," said Pratyush Hota, a town planner by profession.