Town Planning Law, and the Development Plan

In one line

A document that says what every plot in a city may be used for, made once in twenty years, and the single most powerful instrument of land allocation in India.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: town planning is a State subject under Entry 5 of List II, local government; in Maharashtra it is governed by the Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning Act, 1966, under which a Regional Plan is prepared for a region and a Development Plan for the area of a planning authority; the Development Plan zones the land, reserves land for public purposes and prescribes development control regulations; development may not be carried out without the permission of the planning authority; and land may be acquired for a reservation, or the reservation may lapse if it is not acquired within the period the Act allows.

The Constitutional and statutory place

Entry 5 of List II gives the States local government, including the constitution and powers of municipal corporations, improvement trusts and other local authorities for the purpose of local self-government or village administration.

The Seventy-fourth Amendment inserted article 243W and the Twelfth Schedule, which lists urban planning including town planning and regulation of land-use and construction of buildings among the matters a State may devolve to a municipality, and article 243ZD provides for a District Planning Committee to consolidate the plans of the panchayats and the municipalities, and article 243ZE for a Metropolitan Planning Committee.

In Maharashtra the operative statute is the Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning Act, 1966, which provides for regional plans, development plans, town planning schemes, development permission and the compulsory acquisition of land needed for a plan.

The instruments

The Regional Plan. Prepared for a region by a Regional Planning Board, it indicates the manner in which the land in the region is to be used, the reservation of areas for open spaces, forests, agriculture and industry, and the alignment of the major infrastructure.

The Development Plan. Prepared by the planning authority for its own area, and this is the document that matters to a citizen. It shows the proposals for the allocation of land for different uses, that is the zoning; the reservations of land for public purposes such as schools, parks, playgrounds, hospitals, markets, roads and public housing; the layout of the roads; and it is accompanied by the Development Control Regulations, which prescribe the floor space index, the setbacks, the ground coverage, the height, the parking and, in modern plans, the rainwater harvesting and the solar and waste requirements.

A Town Planning Scheme is the older and more elaborate device: the authority takes the whole of an area, redraws the plots, takes a percentage of each owner's land for roads and open space, and returns a reconstituted plot, the betterment being recovered from the owner. It is the only Indian planning instrument that reorganises land without buying it, and it is used far less than it should be.