Bharatidasan University to prepare land use maps for seven cities

C Shivakumar

Chennai:

The state government has entrusted Bharatidasan University to prepare land use maps in the first phase of preparation of master plan for areas other than Chennai Metropolitan Area.

 Sources told Express that the state government has entrusted the work of preparation of master plan for 8,447 square kilometers to Bharatidasan University at a cost of Rs 4.91 crore.

The university will be preparing land use map for composite local planning areas of Coimbatore, Madurai, Tiruchirapalli, Thoothkudi, Tiruppur, Erode and Hosur using modern techniques.

Currently, 6,950 square kilometer of area has already been covered by planning authorities. These include 27 composite local planning (CLP) authorities, 88 single local planning authorities and eight new town development authorities.

The government is now trying to bring remaining 42,245 square kilometer area under the planning area as such field survey for preparing existing land use map and subsequent master plan is being taken up.

Interestingly, Bharatidasan University was given preference over Institute of Remote Sensing, Anna University and School of Architecture, Anna University. Sources said that Bhartidasan University quoted Rs 5,440 per square kilometer against 8,125 per square Km by institute of Remote Sensing and Rs 7,995 by School of Architecture and Planning.

Surprisingly, sources claim that the authorities feel the master plan exercise for the entire area by engaging the staff of town and country planning department is a time consuming one as the whole exercise will take 20 years. Interestingly, this comes when the sanctioned posts in DTCP have not been filled up and DTCP is performing its duties with only 42 per cent of the strength. It is believed it will take nine months to prepare land use map and land use register.

Sources said following the experience, the rest of the area of the state would be covered within a span of two years engaging more number of universities or consultants.

Name of CLP  Existing extent  Proposed area   Area covered

Coimbatore        1276 sq Km      2,331 sq km          3,607 sqkm

Madurai               785 sq km          409 sq km           1,194 sq km

Tiruchirapalli        489 sq km          315 sq km              804 sq km

Thoothkudi           355 sq km          113 sq km             468 sqkm

Erode                   530 sqkm           201 sqkm              731 sqkm

Tiruppur               220 sqkm           827.91 sqkm        1,048 sqkm

Hosur                  292 sqkm           303 sqkm             595 sqkm

Total                  3,947 sqkm          4500 sqkm           8447 sqkm