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Belgaum Citizens Forum has launched online campaign to press for early implementation of New City Development Plan (CDP) for Belgaum according to citizens' perspective for orderly growth of the city.
“Forum is taking this fight up to Bangalore so that Belgaum gets what it deserves. The forum's campaign is targeted at Karnataka's Urban Development Minister, Mr Suresh Kumar, for it is his department which is delaying the process of implementing CDP,” Mr Rajeev Topannavar of BelgaumNext and a forum member told Business Line .
“The city can transform and grow only if CDP issue is addressed, we are doing several protests for this cause but the Minister, Mr Suresh Kumar, has been mute to our demands and has taken no action on implementing it,” he added.
As part of protest, the forum has been sending requests to Mr Suresh Kumar on his Facebook page and to his blog site asking him to attend to Belgaum city's demands.
Citizens Forum is fighting for three fundamental issues: Change in building by-laws for City Corporation of Belgaum. New City Development Plan and change in FSI and new layouts for a growing city.
Building bylaws
City Corporation of Belgaum (CCB) adopted building permission bylaws of Belgaum Urban Development Authority (BUDA) in 1993, BUDA primarily develops layouts in the outskirts of the city, where as CCB has certain areas in the city which are 100-year old with narrow lanes and discontinued sewage lines, CCB covers 85 per cent of the land area and BUDA covers 15 per cent of land area.
Mr Topannavar said: “In this case how can CCB follow BUDA building bylaws which are impractical for CCB and are as old as 1993, This has lead to illegal construction all over the city and we are headed to a ‘city of slums', whereas other corporations in the State have their own bylaws for building permission we don't have and the MLAs, mayor, corporators are not doing anything about it.”
The change in land use pattern is what makes it interesting for politicians to delay the plan, the last CDP in Belgaum was framed in 1996. “We were supposed to have a new CDP in 2006, but thanks to some land mafia lobbies and MLAs, we are stuck in 1996 CDP,” complained Mr Topannavar.
Belgaum people think that the city will transform in the next five years considering the State Government's interest and investments flowing into the city. The construction of Secretariat, boom in retail, real estate and other events have led to construction boom in the city.
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