Seeing red: While conceding that the State has every right to make changes, Shiv Sena says citizens need to know of them. File photo more-in The 373 'additional' suggestions and objections to the new Development Plan (DP) for Mumbai have raised a storm, with Shiv Sena leader and Improvement Committee chairman Dilip Lande pointing out a discrepancy in the final number of suggestions and objections accepted by the State government. The matter led to a ruckus in an Improvement Committee meeting earlier this month. According to Mr. Lande, the State government had initially incorporated 1645 changes, including those suggested by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) General Assembly and Planning Committee. The number of changes finally put up for suggestions has gone up to 2018. “The State government has every right to make changes. But we need to know what changes these are, who moved them and on what grounds they have been approved,” said Mr. Lande. “When the BMC general assembly sent changes, they were on record. We made those in consultation with the people of Mumbai. Why are Mumbaikars not being told about these 373 changes? Which political leader or developer are they for?” Mr. Lande has decided not to let the committee function till the State government explains the discrepancy. The State government has already notified the DP while the Excluded Plan (EP) is undergoing scrutiny. Officials claim there is no discrepancy. They say suggestions by the General Assembly remain the same, but some have been broken up to accommodate them in the EP or Sanctioned Modification. “We tallied all the suggestions/objections, and there is no discrepancy. The State government, in many cases, has bifurcated sub-topics into independent topics as some may be in the DP and others in the EP,” said a senior DP department officer. The officer also said several suggestions in the 1991 DP, that were not initially part of the DP revision process, have been ‘pulled back’, thus increasing the number. Officials also said the government had not made any unwarranted changes to the sanctioned part or the EP, and that claims of substantial amendments on the sly were “politically motivated” by the Shiv Sena-ruled BMC, while the government has only made 65 amendments to the DP. Urban Development Department Secretary Nitin Kareer said even the three-dozen-odd changes were based on citizens’ suggestions or were corrections not considered by the BMC. “The figure of 373 provided by the BMC’s Improvement Committee is not correct. If they write to us we will give them a detailed response,” Mr. Kareer said. UDD sources said so far, the government has only made four major changes to the EP. These include changes to the provisions of 31 (1), extending the fungible floor space index (FSI) to structures already having an occupation certificate. This was not the case earlier and is being seen as a move to regularise hundreds of structures which did not appropriately use the provisions of fungible FSI introduced in 2012. The other changes include putting in abeyance the mill land-sharing formula and removing the cap of four (times the size of plot) from a slum to increase the buildable space while linking the increase to road width. “The idea is to give more incentives to slums in not-so-prime areas, while densifying slums with an increased buildable space,” said an official. The State government is also likely to include the proposal to extend fungible FSI provisions to Maharashtra Housing and Development Authority structures in the EP after it is likely to be approved by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis this week, sources in the UDD said.

Stay updated with all the Mumbai Latest News headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.