March 1, 2015
Plan to develop Kalyani as the next satellite town underway
The West Bengal Government has started working on a plan to develop Kalyani as the next satellite town close to Kolkata.
A meeting was held to discuss the issue and inspect the sites. Among the plans that have been chalked up are building an entry gate to Kalyani, creating urban housing replacing dilapidated buildings and coming up with a process of redesigning to improve service delivery. The authorities also inspected the site where the KMDA is setting up a sewerage treatment plant under the National Ganga River Basin Authority scheme.
The State Urban Development Secretary said a 3-acre plot has already been identified, which will be put on e-auction for setting up an educational institute. The plot will be auctioned on a lease-hold basis for 99 years. The authorities also plan to renovate the old, dilapidated government houses. Several government houses set up during the ’60s and ’70s were used by different institutes, but many of them have now been abandoned. The idea is to renovate or sell those buildings so that space can be created for setting up urban housing.
The Trinamool Congress government has already planned to develop 10 townships across the state as smart cities and Kalyani is one of them. However, with the detailed layout of the smart city concept yet to be developed — except for New Town that already has the required infrastructure — the immediate plan of the government is to develop the infrastructure for developing the townships. The authorities are focusing on Kalyani as it is close to Kolkata and has the land available for urbanization.
Kalyani has immense potential to be urbanized. Work on the Kalyani-Barrackpore expressway that will become a six-lane highway has already started under the JNNURM scheme. Once it is completed, it will pave way for a huge traffic volume entering Kalyani from the city in a very short time.
According to the new urban policy that the government has come up with, 15% additional floor area ratio (FAR) has been allowed to make way for buildings with larger space like mass housing, IT complexes and mega commercial housing complexes. This policy will be used to develop Kalyani too.
