Mumbai: Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday announced that the government will set up an Urban Art Commission to look into the beautification of open spaces in the city and its suburbs, and to ensure that these spaces are protected and made available for public use.
Mr. Fadnavis was speaking after releasing the Observer Research Foundation’s (ORF) report titled ‘Endangered Future of Mumbai’s Open Spaces’.
Responding to ORF chairman Sudheendra Kulkarni’s ‘urgent cry for help’ for action on the report, Mr. Fadnavis said, “The State government will act immediately to protect open spaces and will work towards making them accessible to every citizen.”
The Urban Art Commission is expected to work on the lines of the Delhi Urban Art Commission, which is working to preserve, develop and maintain the aesthetic quality of urban and environmental design in the capital. It also provides advice and guidance to any local body to provide an aesthetic touch to building projects or development proposals.
Mr. Fadnavis said, “You don’t require more money to beautify the city, you need better policies.” The Chief Minister said the government plans to approve this proposal within the next six months.
“In the last one-and-a-half years, I have cleared around 70 development proposals in the State. The duration between the development of a plan and actual execution leads to encroachment on the reserved open spaces,” Mr. Fadnavis said.
He said the Development Plan (DP) of 1991 had achieved only 20% of its objectives.
“To achieve the DP’s objectives, the State government is going to create new instruments,” Mr. Fadnavis said.
One of the instruments, the Chief Minister said, was providing adequate compensation to people whose land was reserved in the DP. “Convincing people to make land available for planned projects is the major task in implementing a DP. Hence, we came up with the changes in transfer of development rights (TDR), which now ensure that affected people get twice the amount of existing prices as compensation,” he said.