JDA lands in soup over Master Plan violation

Jaipur: The trend of indiscriminately changing the sizes of a few roads including widening of the 200-feet wide Airport Road from the Master Plan has landed Jaipur Development Authority (JDA) officials into a soup.
Officials said around 22 of 85 encroachers of 2km long stretch of the Airport Road have obtained stay orders from the court by showing documents given by JDA officials stating that the stretch of the road will remain only 160-feet wide.
“The document in question was issued in 2014, around two years after the airport officials stopped using the old Terminal 1 of the Jaipur Airport. According to the present Master Plan, the entire stretch of the road has to be 200-feet wide,” an official said.
A section of JDA officials has alleged that there are a few other roads in the city where JDA has changed the width of the road from the original Master Plan to facilitate the encroachers. “One such road is the Nirman Nagar Road right next to the Malviya Nagar Metro station. JDA officials have changed the width of this road at least thrice in the last two decades,” an official said.
Although the enforcement officials are moving court to remove the encroachers, officials have claimed that in no way can JDA let the encroachers avoid handing over the encroached portion to the civic body.
“Out of 200-feet, around 20 feet of this road are for service roads and dividers of service roads and main flanks and medians of the main flanks. It means each of the two flanks of the roads is 90 feet wide. Now, at the disturbed stretch, there are no service roads. The flanks are only 60-feet wide on this road. To fix the alignment, we have to acquire at least 30 feet of encroachments,” added an official.