Residents objected when the civic body recently gave them notice that an 80-foot road between the village of Naranpura and the Naranpura railway crossing will be widened to 100 feet.
They discovered that there is no standard policy for the same and that the road line was extended under the revised-development plan (re-DP) without any kind of public participation.
Before establishing new town planning designs, the civic body consults the general public, but it does not extend this approach to re-DPs.
Following the approval of re-DP proposals without seeking public input, more than 100 roads in the city, including Ashram Road, Anandnagar Road, and Drive-In Road, have been widened. Typically, AUDA prepares development plans with future growth along the roadways in mind.
On the other hand, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) suggests re-DPing (road widening) a road after taking the volume of traffic into account. Based on this, the state urban development department and later, the AUDA issued instructions to widen the TP road.
“In most cases, when owners of properties located along a road approach the AMC for re-development permissions within a decade or two, they leave road margins as per the new re-DP road lines. Most properties on the TP roads go in for re-development, so the adherence to the road lines is taken care of,” said a senior AMC official.
If the road lines are adhered to, then there will be a reduction in the size of the property. In such cases, transferable development rights (TDR) are offered as compensation to the property holders, he said.
In the past, many prime roads have been re-DPed. The CG Road was widened to 100 feet under re-DP in 1995, and afterwards Ashram Road, which runs between Kochrab Village and Ahmedabad Collector’s Office, was widened from 36 metres to 60 metres.
Rakesh Patel, a resident of Naranpura, said, “The road in question in Naranpura is 80-foot-wide according to the development plan. This was re-DPed to 100 feet. Why was no survey undertaken prior to extending the road lines?”
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