Haphazard growth in Srinagar blamed on ‘faulty’ master plans

Azhar Qadri
Tribune News Service
Srinagar, June 22

The new master plan for Srinagar has made a scathing criticism of the two previous programmes, which guided the development of the state’s summer capital, and concluded that the planning in the past five decades failed the city that has rapidly grown and expanded.

The new master plan, prepared by the Town Planning Organisation, Kashmir, and approved this year by the State Administrative Council headed by Governor Satya Pal Malik, has claimed that the previous plans adopted “unscientific treatment” to problems and blamed them for “slowly converting the city into a slum”.

Srinagar, the state’s summer capital, witnessed unplanned growth in recent decades with even the state government leading the ill-planned construction spree in flood basins in the city.

What is been described as “skewed urbanisation” by the new plan, Srinagar Metropolitan Region, which includes Srinagar city and its peripheral areas, accounts for more than 75 per cent of the Kashmir valley’s urban population.

The city’s development has, so far, been guided by the two master plans both of which are now being described as faulty. The first plan was in effect from 1971 to 2001 and was the first comprehensive planning effort made by the state government.

The plan, however, triggered the city’s growth in west and southwest — mostly in low-lying areas, wetlands and flood absorption basins adjacent to a flood spill channel.

“There was a plan holiday kind of scenario from 1991-2001 and the master plan-1991 was illogically extended up to 2001, although an effort for the preparation of second master plan was also made through the National Institute of Urban Affairs in mid-1980s,” the new plan has noted.

The second master plan was from the year 2000 to 2021. However, the new master plan, which came into effect this year, concluded that both the previous master plans “failed to give Srinagar a safe direction”.

“The failure may also be attributed to archaic institutional structure of urban local bodies, including the Srinagar Municipal Corporation, concerned departments, etc, entrusted with the implementation of the master plans,” it said.

The 2035 plan noted that the general understanding of the issues and the diagnosis of the problem by the previous master plans was “not followed by a scientific treatment of the issues.”

It also concluded that the master plan 1971-91 discouraged the conservation of the built heritage and the repair and reconstruction of dilapidated structures that “might have been the reasons for slowly converting the city into a slum”.

‘Unscientific treatment’ 

The new master plan, prepared by the Town Planning Organisation, Kashmir, and approved this year by the State Administrative Council headed by Governor Satya Pal Malik, has claimed that the previous plans adopted “unscientific treatment” to problems and blamed them for “slowly converting the city into a slum”.