AFORD's workshop on development of Bhubaneswar

While inaugurating the workshop, Chief Guest Sashi Bhusan Behera, MLA Jayadev, Bhubaneswar said, "It’s great to see the developers, architects, BDA officials, village representatives under one roof discussing the development of peripheral Bhubaneswar."

He also said, "Bhubaneswar is rapidly growing in all direction. So there should be a proper coordination among all these people for a smooth operation so that the opportunities can be rightly utilized and challenges can be properly addressed. AFORD should conduct more and more such workshops for the betterment of peripheral Bhubaneswar."

Chief Speaker Dr. Krishan Kumar, IAS vice- Chairman, BDA & Commissioner, BMC, Bhubaneswar said, "Initially the only model available with the Government was the land acquisition where a land owner gets a compensation but deprived of the ownership of the land. Then specific models were prepared for the infrastructural developments of the cities."

"We can say a model to be successful when all the segments involved in this are benefited. The land owner can also enjoy the benefit of infrastructural Developments. The next model is Noida model which is implemented in Haryana and Punjab etc where after acquiring the land the authority gives compensation to the land owners and a also plots to them where they can have their house or shops. So here the landowner actually enjoys the infrastructural Development of the area," he said.

He further added, "The next model is Gujarat Model which is town planning model. It’s a large scale model. Here in the town planning model, the land owner also gets back a share of his land along with proper infrastructure developed by the Government. The land owner gets the benefit of high value apparition because of these infrastructural developments. This is a win win situation for the public and the govt. All these provisions are there in BDA rules, but it was not implemented. We are calling it as Gujarat model because Gujarat has already implemented it. Otherwise we could have addressed it as Odisha model. So let’s follow the rules of BDA and make it Odisha model. Now it has been decided to have 4 townships with 2000 acre land in the peripheral Bhubaneswar.

PK Patnaik, retd. Director, Town Planning, Bhubaneswar said, "We need to provide proper infrastructural facility in all peripheral area of Bhubaneswar. We need to develop very efficient transport system; use efficient means of transit and most important there has to be a resedensification of Bhubaneswar."

Speaking on this occasion, Umesh Patnaik, President, AFORD said, "We are very happy to conduct such workshop and in future we will continue our effort to bring developers, land owners, BDA, BMC all under one roof to discuss on various issues by organizing similar workshop and seminars.

General Secretary, Nishit Ranjan Nanda, moderated the workshop.

All the members of AFORD, Land owners, Architects, Developers were present in this workshop.