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Indian Express
2 days ago
- Automotive
- Indian Express
Municipal Corporation to pilot Parking Area Management Plan in two areas in Ahmedabad
The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), based on the recommendation of the High Level Committee on Urban Planning, plans to pilot a Parking Area Management Plan (PAMP) near Gurukul and Walled City streets, officials familiar with the matter said. The AMC has identified several 'High Parking Demand Areas' in its document — Revised Parking Policy 2023 — including Gurukul, Walled City, Prahlad Nagar, Mithakali Junction, Ashram Road, and 120 Feet Road, which may require targeted strategies. 'As suggested by the High Level Committee on Urban Planning, we are willing to go ahead for a pilot study on these two locations: Gurukul and Walled City streets. We have to redefine paroling in urban areas. Also, we are planning to demarcate city roads (as major or main roads) which should be clear for a smooth traffic flow,' Ahmedabad Municipal Commissioner Banchhanidhi Pani told The Indian Express. AMC in its Revised Ahmedabad Parking Policy 2023 has suggested delineating parking zones based on the existing street hierarchy of the streets in Ahmedabad. 'This is primarily because the mixed-use nature of Ahmedabad is prevalent along its major roads and tapers off towards mono land uses along inner roads. Hence, there is a higher demand on parking spaces on major roads and a slightly lesser demand on the secondary and collector roads and even much lower on local roads. The HLC report on Gujarat has proposed Ahmedabad city authorities to develop a comprehensive PAMP to address the varying parking demands across different zones of the city, with a focus on ensuring efficient space utilisation and improved traffic flow. 'The local authorities should develop an area-level plan by delineating and demarcating the Parking Area Management Plan boundary. These areas require targeted strategies, such as the development of regulated parking on roads, charging for parking, and restricting vehicle types and parking durations. All of these measures should be implemented through a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model. The PAMP should emphasise better coordination with the urban transport network to integrate parking spaces with public transport hubs, encouraging a shift towards more sustainable travel options,' the report highlights. Further, speed limits restrictions have been proposed on the city roads. 'It is proposed to define speed limits on the urban street network keeping in view the abutting land uses and the activity patterns. Seeking examples from other cities it is recommended to adopt speed limits ranging from 30 – 60 km/hr. In case of high-speed corridors, safe crossings should be designed for pedestrians,' the report suggests. Citing examples of other developed cities, it states 'Most developed cities adopt speed limits ranging from 30 to 60 km/h, depending on the surrounding land's characteristics and the street's hierarchy. In residential or high-traffic areas, lower speed limits (around 30 km/h) are typically enforced to protect pedestrians and cyclists, while on arterial roads or highways, higher limits may be set to accommodate faster-moving traffic while still maintaining safety.' The parking policy 2023 has proposed to divide roads as major, secondary and local roads. 'All the major/arterial roads of the city shall be considered as 'high-demand' roads and a few meters buffer around it to be considered as 'high-demand' parking zones. Along these roads the existing land uses have mainly high-intensive commercial, Central Business District (CBD), Mixed Uses, and important institutional areas. The secondary/sub-arterial roads, collector roads shall be considered as 'medium-demand' roads and a few meters buffer around it to be considered as 'medium-demand' parking zones. These roads shall be the connections between the major arterial roads and pass through many residential neighbourhoods,' the policy states. 'The existing land uses around such roads are medium-level commercial, majorly residential areas …and also many industrial areas are present in the East of Ahmedabad. Examples of such roads include Satellite Road, Xavier's Road, Sandesh Press Road etc. The 'local roads' and 'highways' shall be considered as 'low-demand' roads and a few meters buffer around it to be considered as 'low-demand' parking zones. This is because the local roads pass through residential/inner neighborhoods and the highways are usually conduits for connecting between cities or places with limited parking demand,' the policy states.
Indian Express
3 days ago
- Indian Express
Housing societies, telecom tower, parking lot: The story of Ahmedabad's ‘vanished' lakes
What is common between a group of residential societies in Ghatlodia, a telecom tower in Vejalpur, and a dumpsite in the East Zone? Going by an internal report of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), all of these structures and sites stand on what were once lakes in the city. And that's not all. According to the report, the city has as many as 37 'vanished' lakes. A recent anti-encroachment drive in Ahmedabad's Chandola Lake area, preceded by an exercise to weed out alleged illegal Bangladeshis in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack, saw a total of 12,500 residential, commercial and religious structures reduced to rubble, and four lakh square metres of land cleared. While the authorities stated that all these structures were illegal, and Municipal Commissioner Banchhanidhi Pani defended the demolitions, calling the water bodies 'sacrosanct', questions are being raised about the status of other lakes, including those which have made way for even government buildings. Take the case of an unnamed lake in Thaltej. According to the AMC progress report on the status of lakes, not only does this site house a residential society, it also serves as a base for a water distribution centre of the civic body. In Jodhpur area, a temple stands on the site of an unnamed talavadi (smaller lake/pond) while the erstwhile Kasai Lake in Sarkhej has a mosque and a few residential encroachments. Also in Sarkhej, religious and commercial encroachments can be seen where Malkani Lake once existed, according to the report. While Nikol Lake in the East zone has turned into a dumpsite, Kanetri lake in the same area has reportedly been subsumed by residential and commercial encroachments. The report also mentions several such disappeared lakes that have now been hidden by construction on all sides, leaving no space for a road, whenever it is built, to access them. An example is Gam Talav Kharabo, a listed water body located in Ghatlodia of the North-west Zone. During a visit by The Indian Express, multiple residential societies were found at the site. An entry into what was likely the centre of the lake leads to a cow shed complete with a cattle trough. A puddle caused by unseasonal rain was the only sign of water in the area. Brahmani Talavadi, which used to be located on Corporate Road in Makarba, has also completely vanished. In its place stands an entire gated society containing type E and type D government quarters built by the revenue department. AMC and Collectorate officials, both, declined to comment on these cases. A water body marked as Vejalpur lake does not even have the sloped identifiers required on the banks. It is simply a rectangular plot of land with two-third portion housing an unofficial parking space by local residents, a dumpsite for construction debris, and a feeding zone for pigeons. The remaining portion is a walled-off area containing an office and a telecom tower bearing the marking of public sector company BSNL. The fact that these buildings have encroached on plots of land that were lakes was confirmed by coordinates mentioned in the report accessed by The Indian Express. A unique case is that of the Vatva area, which has a site called Bibi Lake. Local residents who stay on its banks say the water body fills up during monsoon. Construction debris could be seen strewn across more than two thirds of the lake. During its visit, The Indian Express could see some water in a section of the lake. 'The lake fills up to the brim during monsoons as the water from the road drains into it,' said a boy who was heading to a tuition class, taking the dried-up lake bed as a shortcut. During summers, though, the lake is little more than a patch of marsh, made all the more dangerous by piles of brickwork, ceramics and wooden furniture piled onto it. On the side that is still dry, a makeshift cricket pitch could be seen. When asked about the encroachments, an AMC official said, 'In places where buildings have come up, we are taking a call on a case-by-case basis after sending proposals to the state government. This is a policy matter.' Congress Councillor Shehzad Khan Pathan, who had raised the matter during a board meeting in May, told The Indian Express: 'Wherever there is jhuppad patti (kutcha houses), these people (AMC) cite the Supreme Court order that encroachment cannot be done on a water body. But when the government itself does encroachment on lakes, why does nobody remember the order? They should also face the same action that the poor people did. The government cannot carry out encroachment and then run bulldozers only on poor people.' The Leader of Opposition in the AMC further said, 'On Saijpur Lake, there are 40 commercial establishments whose impact fee applications are pending. In another place, there appears to be a metro project construction on a lake.' Impact fee is the amount charged for regularising illegal constructions in Gujarat. Amul Bhatt, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA of Maninagar and former Standing Committee Chairman of the AMC, said, 'I have raised the issue of encroachments on lakes several times in the past one year. Lakes must be kept as water reservoirs and there should be no construction on them, including government buildings.' Most lakes in Ahmedabad city were, until recently, under the purview of the Revenue Department of Gujarat through the Ahmedabad Collectorate. On the AMC's initiative, many lakes were transferred to the civic body. However, the transfer of ownership of several lakes, including Chandola Lake, is pending, confirmed two senior officials of the urban housing and urban development department. Explaining the handover process, BR Sagar, the Resident Additional Collector (RAC) of Ahmedabad district, said, 'When the Collectorate gets a request from the municipal corporation for transfer of a plot identified as a lake, we seek permission from the revenue department. Required orders are passed and the ownership is transferred to the city.' On the conflict between the two government bodies regarding encroachments on lakes, a revenue department official said, 'While the revenue department asked the Collectorate to hand over the lakes to the AMC in their current state, the latter asked the Collectorate to first clear all the encroachments on the lakes and then transfer them. Recently, a solution was reached where the bodies decided to work together to clear the encroachments as they did on Chandola Lake.' Officials said encroachments on other lakes will also be removed with similar 'cooperation'. The second question was that of the area of land on which the lakes are situated. 'Till the time the Collectorate had ownership of the lakes, there was no question of surveying and assessing the size of the land. However, during the time of transfer of ownership, it became necessary to measure the plots with lakes in them. This process is underway in several lakes that are to be handed over to the AMC, which is why the transfers are still pending,' said an official in the know of the process. Dr Jayanti Ravi, the Additional Chief Secretary (ACS) of the Revenue Department, said that the state of the lakes in Ahmedabad had been brought to her notice by local politicians, and a meeting between the Collectorate and Commissionerate had led to the handing over of several lakes to the city while others were still pending due to the amount of paperwork involved in the process. But mostly, evidence of historic lakes or talavadis being on certain plots of land, whether dried out, encroached or having completely vanished, come from the 7/12 (saat-baara) — a revenue department document denoting ownerships and other critical information on status of a plot of land. A revenue department official said, 'It will be mentioned in the 7/12 document that there is a lake on a specific plot of land. Now, if the lake is not in existence at the moment, the irrigation department can be asked to check if the plot is a water reservoir. Officials of the revenue department can then take a call on whether to remove the lake status from that particular plot of land or not. 'Though Chandola Lake doesn't have water all year round, it fills up during monsoon. Hence, it is a water reservoir and thus must remain one,' said an official. The AMC had sought the transfer of 142 lakes from the Revenue Department, said RAC Sagar. 'While 27 lakes have been handed over, plots of 82 of them are being measured and will be transferred after this process. AMC's request for 33 lakes is still under due consideration.' Besides turning larger water bodies into lakefronts on the lines of Vastrapur and Kankaria in Ahmedabad, there has been a push to use the 'blue cover' in the city to mitigate floods and direct the rain water to recharge them. This is expected to also counter the Urban Heat Island (UHI) Effect – a phenomenon when certain pockets within a city experience higher heat load than surrounding or neighbouring areas on the same day. For this, the AMC has been working on the lake-interlinking project that uses hydrology, land gradient and gravity to interconnect clusters of lakes in the same area to accommodate stormwater as well as reservoirs that can be filled using Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs). Currently, there are seven sets of lakes that are already interlinked or where work in this direction is underway. Mirant Parikh, the Deputy Municipal Commissioner (DyMC) for Water and Drainage Projects at the AMC, said, 'We are planning interlinking in groups of lakes located next to each other. So, what happens is that water will go into the lakes through STPs but if one lake gets full, water can flow into other lakes.' Parikh said that in the other lakes, pre-monsoon work was underway to ensure that they accommodate more water. 'In small lakes, we will implement cost-effective development models and make catch pits to divert rain water into them so that the flooding issue is resolved during monsoon. We will also increase their water carrying capacity by deepening them – a process that is underway,' Parikh added. With the handover of Chandola Lake to the AMC imminent, the planning to turn it into a 'city attraction' is already underway. The first plan, said officials, is to finish clearing all the debris. Until a few weeks ago, the area was home to thousands of people, some of whom claimed they had been staying there for generations. As a result, so much is the volume of remnants of their homes that AMC has invited anyone seeking to salvage scrap, wood or other material to freely do so in the hope that it will reduce the burden for the civic body. At the same time, work is on to deepen the lake bed as well as construct a boundary wall with a platform and fencing through which visitors could view the lake. Now the question: Where will the water come from? Officials said there are three viable ways to bring water to Chandola. One is from the Kharicut canal, the other is from an STP in Bapunagar. The third is a proposal to construct a new STP on the banks of Chandola. But a major shift that the lake premises will likely go through entails changing the geography of the area. Chandola Lake premises is made up of three water bodies — the greater Chandola and two smaller (Nana) lakes to its north and north east — all separated by a land barrier. This land barrier is where major parts of the encroachments had come up over the last three or four decades. Deputy Municipal Commissioner Riddhesh Raval told The Indian Express that the land barrier will be removed to unify all the three lakes to turn the entire four lakh square metres into a single water body. This, said Raval, is important because the water inlets from the STP near the Malek Saban Lake in Bapunagar and the water line connecting Kharicut canal are linked to one of the smaller Chandola lakes. If the barrier is not demolished, the water won't reach the greater lake, thus defeating the purpose of the project.
Straits Times
5 days ago
- General
- Straits Times
Indian cities keen to develop riverfronts but cleaning polluted rivers lags
While riverfront projects have given residents a public space, a key challenge cities face are the polluted rivers. PHOTO: REUTERS NEW DELHI – As Indian cities roll out plans to build attractive riverfront s , the improvements on land are outpacing attempts to clean up the waters of the polluted rivers below them . In the western state of Gujarat, a plan to extend the riverfront from the existing 11 .25 km in Ahmedabad city along the Sabarmati R iver to 38km includes the development of a 17.5km stretch by Singapore firm Surbana Jurong (SJ). The urban planning and design specialist is creating the masterplan for the last phases of the development, covering 591ha of land. The first phase was completed in 2012 but other earlier phases are in different stages of development by other companies. 'When completed, it will be the longest riverfront project in the world, with a total length of over 38km,' said Mr Abhishek Malhotra , SJ's regional director, South Asia. While the riverfront projects have given residents a much-needed public space, a key challenge for Ahmedabad and other cities with riverfront plans, however, are the extremely polluted rivers, which are clogged with sewage, toxic chemicals discharged by factories, and rubbish from rapidly growing cities. On the 371km-long Sabarmati R iver, which flows from the north-western state of Rajasthan into Gujarat, multiple cleaning operations have taken place but with limited success, said environmentalists. In the latest initiative to clean up the river, some 60,000 residents of Ahmedabad have since May 15 picked up 945 tonnes of waste from the riverbed after water was drained to repair the Vasn a B arrage, which controls the flow of water into the Sabarmati River near the riverfront. This is among other initiatives both short term and long term to clean the river – from using trash skimmers to collect floating rubbish to tackling the problem of untreated sewage. However, the pollutants coming into the river have continued to outpace clean-up efforts, noted environmentalists. 'The cleanliness drive is also to ensure wider awareness so that people don't throw waste into the river. We want river waters to be clean,' said Ahmedabad municipal commissioner Banchhanidhi Pani. A boy looks for recyclables as he walks on the banks of Yamuna river in New Delhi on April 11. PHOTO: AFP But it is not just the discarded rubbish that is the problem. A report released recently by Toxics Link, an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation, said high levels of nonylphenol – a chemical with carcinogenic properties that can cause prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women – were detected on the surface water of four rivers including the Sabarmati, downstream of the riverfront project . The chemical, which also kills aquatic life , is used in the textile industry in particular. The report found the highest concentration of the chemical in Cooum River in Tamil Nadu. 'It is not enough to keep the riverfront water clean and not the rest of the stretch,' said Mr Mahesh Pandya, director of Paryavaran Mitra, a Gujarat-based non-governmental organisation dedicated to protecting the environme nt. In September 2024 , the Gujarat High Court rebuked the local authorities for failing to come up with a concrete plan for cleaning up the river. The court initiated a Public Interest Litigation on its own and has kept a close scrutiny of the clean-up efforts. 'All your claims are on paper,' the court noted, according to a report in Gujarat Samachar newspaper. Untreated sewage flowing into the river is a common problem in India' s polluted rivers. According to some estimates, 38,000 million litres of waste water enter Indian rivers due to the lack of functioning sewage treatment plants and poor waste disposal. Many riverfront projects in the pipeline Polluted rivers present a jarring challenge to local governments' plans to spruce up riverfronts and turn them into attractive urban community spaces. A report by the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA) said 61 riverfront projects have been initiated under the Smart Cities Mission, an urban renewal and retrofitting programme by the government to improve facilities and infrastructure in Indian cities. Many more are being developed outside the mission as well. Along the Sabarmati, the first 11.25km of the riverfront development, completed in 2012, has been held up as an exemplary instance of riverfront development in India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was the chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 , hosted world leaders like Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2014 and late Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe in 2017 on the riverfront. SJ, which has joined further development of the riverfront, aims to foster 'a vibrant and engaging urban-river interface', said Mr Malhotra. He said the masterplan 'embraces the natural slope of the riverbanks to create a convenient transition from the street level to the lower terrace, enhancing the connection between riverfront and the surrounding urban fabric'. The firm would be using a 'blend of design strategies – from landscaped stepped terraces to natural, soft edges', he added, allowing 'inclusive public access for people of all abilities'. In addition, the Gujarat government is proposing to build a Singapore-style Cloud Forest – a greenhouse-like structure featuring exotic trees and plants under a dome – covering an area of over 2,500 sq m, which is smaller than a football field. The trend to develop riverfronts in India is part of a larger push to boost urban infrastructure and make cities liveable. A study on waterfront development projects by the SPA, a public higher education institution, noted that waterfront development projects were significant as cities were 'grappling with multiple issues of pollution, biodiversity loss and extreme pressure on open spaces'. Thousands perform yoga together on the Sabarmati riverfront in Ahmedabad, India on World Yoga Day, on June 21. PHOTO: REUTERS It added that these developments lead to 'an increase in available and usable open spaces, re-establishing the lost connection between the people and the waterbody, an increase in livelihood options and property prices'. The SPA study noted that the development of the Ganga riverfront in the eastern city of Patna in Bihar state had led to significantly enhanced recreational facilities, improved public transport connectivity, and addressed waste management issues. It further noted that anecdotal evidence suggested potential increase in property values and economic activity. In 2022, the Central Pollution Control Board identified 311 polluted river stretches, calculated through levels of biochemical oxygen demand, an important indicator of water quality, on 279 rivers. Clean up rivers before developing riverfronts In some cities, residents are putting pressure on the authorities to pay as much attention to environmental concerns as developing the riverfront. Angry citizens of Pune, a city in the western state of Maharashtra, have staged protest marches, filed lawsuits, and planted trees to demand that the Mula R iver be cleaned up and that riverfront developments take environmental concerns into account. A concrete heavy riverside development would affect the natural aqueducts that charge the groundwater and the biodiversity along the river, said Pune-based environmentalist Mukund Mavalankar. 'We have pointed out that the river is dying because of untreated sewage going into the river. This needs to be tackled first,' said Mr Mavalankar. The capacity of sewage treatment plants along the Mula River is 500 million litres per day, when the required capacity is 1,000 million lit res, he added. While the protests and legal cases have not stalled plans as yet, they have brought focus on the issue of rejuvenating rivers and ensuring that wanton construction does not take place along their banks. A key problem has also been the lack of a holistic approach to clean rivers that flow through multiple states, water experts noted, arguing that piecemeal efforts are often unsuccessful despite the best intentions. Ms Jaya Dhindaw, the executive programme director of Sustainable Cities at WRI India, an independent research organisation, said important initiatives and institutional mechanisms have been set up by the government like the National Mission for Clean Ganga to clean the river Ganga and the surrounding areas. The Ganga is a 2,525km-long river that crosses multiple states in India before flowing into Bangladesh. But she noted: 'There still remains a lot to be done in terms of addressing issues such as checking and stopping source pollution, integrating ecosystem preservation and restoration, and ensuring financial and institutional wherewithal for maintenance of clean-ups.' 'A data-led approach which helps identify the sources of pollution, strong enforcement of pollution control, integrating nature-based solutions to manage water quality and enabling community ownership and stewardship of rivers are essential to the long-term success of clean-up efforts,' she added. Test case in Delhi A test case for whether river rejuvenation can happen with riverfront development is in the capital city. The Delhi government, which like Gujarat's is led by Mr Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, has promised a Sabarmati type riverfront makeover along the Yamuna R iver. Plans include creating a central piazza, topiary park, shopping centre and river promenade along a 22km stretch of the river. The Yamuna flows through multiple states, with the stretch in Delhi among its most polluted. Between 2017 and 2022, the Delhi government spent more than 68 billion rupees (S$1 billion) to clean the Yamuna, but it still has high levels of pollutants from untreated sewage and industrial waste. The Delhi government recently announced a 30-point action plan to clean the river which includes building 40 sewage treatment plants. For residents, a riverfront to go to for a stroll or a cruise down the river is an attractive proposition. 'It would be great to have a riverfront,' said Ms Rit u Sharma, a Delhi resident, who added that she would love to take a walk along the riverfront. 'But I hope they can clean the pollution too.' Nirmala Ganapathy is India bureau chief at The Straits Times. She is based in New Delhi and writes about India's foreign policy and politics. Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Hans India
15-05-2025
- Hans India
Gujarat: AMC to crackdown on unregistered pets after dog mauls baby
Ahmedabad: Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) is moving to tighten regulations on pet ownership in the city, in the wake of a tragic incident in the Hathijan area, where a four-month-old baby girl was mauled by a pet dog. Municipal Commissioner Banchhanidhi Pani, who chaired a high-level meeting following the incident, has directed officials to draft a strict policy targeting unregistered pet dog owners. He has also issued instructions to seize dogs belonging to individuals who fail to comply with mandatory registration norms. According to the AMC, over 5,000 pet owners in Ahmedabad have formally registered their dogs. However, the actual number of pet dogs in the city is believed to be significantly higher. In light of this, the Commissioner has called for a comprehensive survey to determine the true extent of pet ownership across various wards. The proposed policy will include heavy penalties for residents, particularly those in housing societies, flats, and apartments, who keep unregistered pet dogs. Pani emphasised that the framework should mirror the city's existing cattle control policy, ensuring better regulation and safety for all citizens. 'The goal is to enforce accountability among pet owners and avoid incidents like the one in Hathijan,' the Commissioner said, adding that the municipality will take a zero-tolerance approach toward non-compliance. The AMC is expected to roll out detailed guidelines and enforcement mechanisms in the coming weeks. Gujarat has witnessed a significant rise in pet ownership, particularly in urban centres like Ahmedabad. Recent initiatives by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) have led to the registration of over 2,900 pet dogs, with popular breeds including Labradors and German Shepherds. This surge in registrations follows a Supreme Court directive aimed at better managing the pet population and addressing concerns related to stray dogs. Despite these efforts, estimates suggest that Ahmedabad alone is home to approximately 1.5 lakh pet dogs, indicating that a significant number remain unregistered.
