Ahmedabad: according to reports in the Ahmedabad press, a detailed plan for urban development in Bihar is being formulated at the Centre for Environment Planning and Technology (CEPT), Ahmedabad.
Faced with the assignment of preparing town planning schemes for the city of Patna, the experts at CEPT discovered, according to Utpal Sharma, dean, faculty of planning and public policy and arts & humanities at CEPT, that ‘there is no town planning act in Bihar which we could refer to. So we requested the state government to first frame a town planning act’. This is essential for earmarking the metropolitan area and the drawing of any scheme at all, since town planning can only be done in a given legal context.
Thus the Ahmedabad-based Centre for Environment Planning and Technology (CEPT)’s urban planner and urban management consultants have to start from scratch. They are currently preparing Bihar’s first Town and Country Planning Act. The legislation, once approved, will guide planned urban development in Bihar.
The entire exercise is part of a broader project ‘Spur Programme for Urban Reforms in Bihar’, a joint effort of the Centre, Bihar government, and the UK government’s department of international development (DFID).
Experts in Gujarat are currently working on a list of dos and don’ts for around 142 civic bodies in that state. The proposed Town and Country Planning Act for Bihar will lay down procedures for different types of development plans, building and planning norms, rules for land use plan and open space plan as well as for housing for the poor.
As Bihar is the birthplace of Buddhism, it has important heritage structures. The proposed Act will also include norms for conservation of these structures.
PU Asnani, city-based urban management consultant and lead advisor for Spur Program for Urban Reforms in Bihar, said the proposed Town and Country Planning Act will lay down guidelines for all the 142 civic bodies in Bihar.
‘The urban development project covers around 65% of the state’s urban area, i.e., 28 cities of the state. Bihar has a major problem of unplanned construction in urban areas but the state government is making serious efforts for planned urban development in the state,’ Asnani said.