has any one objected to this?
two sheets of yellow paper, containing a Petition to
Prime Minister (for Delhi metro to be underground),
circulated at end of August 2006 among registered
architects for them to sign (next to pre-affixed label
bearing their name, address, phone numbers and Council
Registration Number) and to send (in enclosed
pre-stamped and pre-addressed envelope) to the
circulating architect for forwarding to PM.
text at e.o.m.
The Petition is a lot like the letter reportedly
written in 2004 to PM by one lady by name of Alpana
Kishore that PM had directed authorities to look into
and authorities had obliged, apparently including by
not looking into duly filed objections including mine
to the proposal to amend MPD to allow metro property
development up to 3 Ha at each station, for which
public notice had been issued pursuant to (and short
of the) idea of white-zone all along the metro
corridor. Alpana Kishore continued past that public
notice to fuss about white-zone in 2004, which fuss
the DUAC imagining-Delhi team in 2005 and this
Petition by registered architects in 2006 endorses
past the final notification and its incorporation in
MPD-2021 public notice (and, of course, past the
impugning of said final notification and two others in
my humble writ petition concerning metro property
development).
The Petition is entirely based on out-dated facts and
patently poorly informed ideas about transport
planning, conservation, and land use planning (all of
which are professional specializations not limited to
Architects) as well as about citizens participation
(as defined in development and environmental law and
practiced otherwise by NGOs). On the other hand, it
makes no reference to issues thrown up by metro
property development constructions proceeding without
statutory approvals (as revealed, besides in my humble
writ petition, in the press after court-appointed
commissioners took note of malls that private builders
and their architects had built with permits on metro
property development sites). This is even though
ensuring statutory approvals falls within the scope of
architectural services and code of professional
conduct prescribed by the Council of Architecture.
The Petition makes a sole prayer, for only underground
metro. This is implicitly a prayer for more metro
property development in the extant rationale wherein
since elevated metro is being justified primarily on
basis of being cheaper than underground metro and
metro property development is being justified in terms
of a financial plan that requires/allows raising a
percentage of total metro cost through it. The total
metro cost includes also penalties for metro property
development in which private architects and builders
go ahead with constructions without building
sanctions. For construction of privately designed and
built IT Park Block-1 of DMRC has lately paid penalty
of 1.97 crores for building without sanction.
The Petition that registered architects are being
urged to sign thus appears to me to be a case of the
Register of Architects being put to dubious use that
ought to be brought to the notice of the Council.
===text of circulating petition===
PETITION BEFORE THE HONOURABLE PRIME MINISTER OF INDIA
Hon'ble Dr Manmohan Singhji
Prime Minister of India
South Secretariat
New Delhi
Respected Pradhan Mantriji,
Construction of Delhi's Metro Rail Project is a major
achievement of India's Railway Engineers. They have
made important contributions towards project
implementation by introduction of innovative
technology and systematized project management.
However, these laudable achievements are completely
overshadowed by the project's lack of interface with
the urban fabric of the city. Major part of the
project, about 205 km long, a distance from here to
Agra, comprises of massive, elevated rail tracks,
guaranteed to deface the surrounding cityscape. With
the completion of 44 km of phase I of these tracks,
the character and reputation of Delhi as a symbol of
India's heritage is already degraded. Addition of
another 161 km of such rail tracks will so destroy the
city's character, that people traveling on major roads
of Delhi will cease to experience buildings and trees
altogether. Instead day in day out, wherever the
people go, they will be overwhelmed with rail tracks
on their heads all over the city. Known as a "City of
Monuments", Delhi could well acquire the adage: "City
of Serpentine Concrete" in the near future.
DMRC project is a massive, Rs.40,000 crore undertaking
based on the longest ever conceived elevated,
metrorail network in the world. Such projects, the
world over in domestic societies, are subjected to
environmental evaluation prior to implementation.
Citizen participation is invariably ensured, even
welcomed as a necessary prerequisite. An exercise in
citizen participation has never been conducted by any
Local Authority here in Delhi. On the contrary, DMRC
is known to follow a hush-hush approach. Routes are
published only after contracts for their construction
are awarded. A finalized map showing all the routes of
IIIrd and IVth phases is even today impossible to
obtain.
It is regrettable that the project has been planned as
a stand alone transport system, detached from the
Master Plan. Even worse, the Delhi Master Plan 2021 is
now amended to accommodate one kilometer wide strip of
land of dense, commercial use all along the rail
corridor. Amazingly, this 205 km. long strip
encompasses land equivalent to half the city of
Chandigarh, making it a thoughtless Sub Sity with
Metrocity. The logic of Urban Planning has been turned
on its head. Instead of fitting a transport system
into a well organized land use framework, land-uses
are now arbitrarily altered to chase a transport
system. By ignoring imperatives of planned urban
development in favour of commercial interests of the
DMRC system, citizens of Delhi will now continue to
suffer the consequences of misconceived developmental
policies that result in haphazard urban growth.
Delhi as India's Capital enshrines and projects the
country's heritage of its civilizational values. It
would be ironic id Delhi's image of a cradle of
millennia of history is obliterated by an ugly
colossus of concrete based on 19th century technology.
And that too at a time when India is fast emerging as
a formidable reservoir of intellectual capabilities on
the world stage.
It is a matter of gratification that the Prime
Ministers of India have always taken keen personal
interest in the planning of Delhi. Pandit Jawahar Lal
Nehru will ever be remembered for initiating the
Master Plan of Delhi, Mrs Gandhi for intervening to
replan the Connaught Place Extension of New Delhi, and
Shri Rajiv Gandhi for ensuring that the DMRC's North
South corridor remained underground across Lutyens
Delhi.
While substantial damage is already inflicted on Delhi
by the elevated rail tracks of the first two phases of
the DMRC scheme, your personal intervention is
urgently requested to ensure that Phase III and IV of
the system are modified to exclude elevated tracks
altogether. The whole system must be kept underground.
I.................................... hereby petition
the Honourable Prime Minister of India to ensure that
the IIIrd and IVth Phases of DMRC's Metro Rail system
are kept entirely underground.
Signature:
Date:
(label with name, address, phone numbers and CoA
registration number affixed)
__________________________________________________
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