Urban development dept to introduce concept of global floor area ratio

The department has also notified certain changes in the West Bengal and Town Country (Planning and Development) Act in a bid “to remove certain procedural difficulties in the matter of setting up of townships on private land”.

It may be recalled that while speaking at her felicitation ceremony given by the Chambers of commerce at a five star hotel on Tuesday afternoon, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had urged the officials of CREDAI to do something with six township projects for which land had already been allotted.

While explaining the changes, Banerjee on Tuesday said that confusion arising over the land use, which takes many months to get resolved resulting in cost escalation will be ironed out following the notification.

As per the notifications regarding global FAR, the modification suggested is in order to avoid conflict between building plan sanctioned by local authority and approval of township plans by the Urban Development Department.

Explaining the changes, a senior official of the Urban Development Department said that there are basically three implications. First of all, it will make it easier to understand the meaning of the theme of a theme township. Secondly, the FAR will be calculated based on the entire area of the project instead of the measurement of the road and the concept of the use of the common property will also get simplified.

For planning the Township project, “the total FAR shall be calculated on the entire project area, irrespective of the use of the area reserved for basic urban infrastructure amenities.

The respective building plan sanctioning authorities such as concerned development authorities, corporations, municipalities and zila parishads shall allow the allocation of global FAR within the proposed township to different segments of the township as per the suitable amendments for the township projects. Moreover, sanction of township shall not be given unless the access road is constructed.”  

The basic urban facilities include the areas that will be used for medical services including, in-patient treatment and out-patient health care unit, education facility like pre-preliminary level school to institution for higher or specialised learning and other commercial and recreational uses like indoor games, sports, socio-cultural and religious activities.