SHIMLA: Claiming that Shimla Development Plan (SDP) prepared by an Ahmedabad-based agency is not suitable for the hill town, former deputy mayor Tikender Panwar in a letter written to chief minister Jai Ram Thakur has stated that if such a plan was allowed to be implemented, the entire city would be ruined and “will become like Gurgaon.” He said that plan does not have any understanding of the mountain topography, architecture, geology or history and culture of Shimla.
He said that fortunately, for the benefit of the citizens of Shimla as well as Himachal Pradesh, this plan has been found to be ill-conceived, and probably illegal by the National Green Tribunal.
He said that proposed Shimla Master Plan, which has been luckily rejected by the Green Tribunal, lacked people’s participation and was more of a top-bottom exercise. He added that the plan has violated elementary principles of planning, like preparing an environmental and physical zonal plan. “It is merely a land-use plan for the benefit of builders. The chief minister should take initiative and leadership in completely revising the Shimla Development Plan. We have summoned a team of experts who have built cities and townships even in war-torn regions of the world. There is a tool that we have created that can be universally applied to the environments of mountain towns,” Panwar said.
