Nancy Singh

There seems to be some buzz and ser­i­ous intent being exem­pli­fied by the mul­ti­tude of agen­cies under the Delhi admin­is­tra­tion. Irre­spect­ive of the vari­ous res­ist­ances, the Delhi plans, IF THEY GO AS UNDER PLAN, seems to take the Delhi “Mega­polis” dreams forward.

After the announce­ment of the 2 SEZs in Bap­rola vil­lage of Delhi, comes the news of the Intent of the author­it­ies to enact the sim­ilar devel­op­ment plans of the growth centres planned under Kan­jhawla & chhawla. Kan­jhawla in fact seems to be already off the block with the first phase of the Bus Ter­minus already com­pleted, and the admin­is­tra­tion and mech­an­ical blocks under construction.

It doesn’t take “3 Idi­ots” from the premier engin­eer­ing insti­tutes to fig­ure out that while it’s easier to plan real estate on paper, it would be a gar­gan­tuan task to imple­ment the allied ser­vices on the ground. Spe­cially, when it comes to the touchy sub­ject of link­ing the unau­thor­ised & reset­tle­ment colon­ies, provid­ing water, sew­er­age, elec­tri­city and roads towards them.

The announce­ment of the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) about their intent to imme­di­ately roll out a Vis­ion 2021 for the ser­vices under their domain, and align­ing them to the Delhi mas­ter plan MPD 2021 is indeed a wel­come sign.

Offi­cials said the Jal Board will now look at alter­ing its plan to include vis­ion 2021. It has already short­l­is­ted eight con­sult­ant com­pan­ies, out of 23 that sub­mit­ted ‘expres­sions of interest’, they added.

“The eight com­pan­ies have been issued ‘request for pro­posal’ and the bids would be announced on Decem­ber 21. Work would then be awar­ded to the selec­ted com­pany for pre­par­a­tion of a sew­er­age mas­ter plan for Delhi,” said the DJB Addi­tional CEO San­tosh Vaidya.

The DJB’s man­date has now tripled: exten­ded to rural, unau­thor­ised, and reset­tle­ment colon­ies of Delhi.

The new sew­er­age mas­ter plan would look into three basic areas of oper­a­tion: New sewer lines into hitherto cov­er­age areas like Outer Delhi spe­cially the areas next to Rohini, Dwarka etc., align­ment of exist­ing net­work of trunk sew­ers and internal sew­ers with exist­ing sew­er­age treat­ment plants, and a wastewa­ter policy for the use of treated effluent.

“Besides provid­ing sew­er­age solu­tions for the city, the selec­ted com­pany will also pre­pare a detailed wastewa­ter policy for the use of efflu­ent,” Vaidya said.

The fact to pon­der is the vari­ous agen­cies already announ­cing their plans. If they all roll out, espe­cially, with the gov­ern­ment talk­ing about single win­dow clear­ances for all such pro­jects, Delhi surely would roll out the car­pet for the real estate developers & investors to reap their rewards over the next 2 – 5 years.

Keep­ing the fin­gers crossed.