Khattar to attend first GMDA meet on Jan 20

GURUGRAM: The first meeting of the Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) will be held under the chairmanship of chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar on January 20 in the city, sources said.
All the development projects in the city will henceforth be undertaken by the newly constituted development body.

"While GMDA has been in place for around a year, it has now become a full-fledged body with all required powers. All future projects such as Metro, city bus service as well as other citizen-centric issues will now be taken up by GMDA. It already has the powers to issue change of land use (CLU) permission, and efforts are on to make it more powerful. This will be the first official meeting of GMDA, and several issues are likely to be discussed. All senior district officials as well as the Gurgaon MP will attend the meeting. The agenda for the meeting though is yet to be finalised," a senior GMDA official said.

Gurgaon MP Rao Inderjit said he expected GMDA to streamline the city's development projects. "So far, the main issue plaguing Gurgaon has been the multiplicity of authorities, which was a bane for the development of the city as there was no coordination among these departments. Therefore, projects took a long time to get implemented. However, now we have GMDA in place, and with the first meeting taking place on January 20, several issues will be taken up soon," he told TOI.

The GMDA, which has been operating out of a makeshift office in Civil Lines, will now be shifted to 15,000- square-foot building close to Medanta hospital in Sector 32.

"We are likely to move into the new office building in the next couple of weeks. Right now, we are not able to function properly owing to space constraints. The staff strength has increased significantly, and there is no room for them. In fact, the Gurugram Metropolitan City Bus Limited (GMCBL), which is a part of GMDA, is being operated from an adjacent building. The new office is spread across three floors, and there is adequate space for parking," said a GMDA official.