Shimla will soon have a new development plan as the state government is in the process of finalising the plan to ensure regulated growth and construction to prevent it from becoming a concrete jungle.

Talking to media, state urban development minister Suresh Bhardwaj said the development plan for Shimla should have been prepared earlier as the capital city was still functioning as the 42 years old interim plan.

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“The state government has hired a private agency for preparing a new Shimla development plan (SDP) and it will be finalized soon,” he said.

He stated that a meeting with stakeholders including him had been organized after detailed consultations were held with officers of various departments.

Now only consultations with the elected representatives were left after which suggestions and objections will be invited from residents of the capital city to finalise the new development plan, he added.

It is worth mentioning here that Shimla has been functioning as per four-decade old plan and it had virtually become a concrete jungle due to haphazard and unregulated construction in the capital city.

This was even pointed out by HP High Court and National Green Tribunal (NGT) in its judgements after which certain restrictions were imposed to stop concretization of Shimla.

In fact, a blanket ban was imposed on new constructions in 17 demarcated green zones of the city in December 2000, besides restricting construction of new buildings to two and half floors to prevent complete destruction of greenery to urban sprawl.

This had led to dissent among locals given the lack of available land and tough topography in constructing new buildings to meet ever growing demand for housing after which the state government had moved the Supreme Court to seek relief.

The state government had allocated the work of preparing Shimla development plan to Gujarat based agency in 2017 but it failed to complete it before Covid pandemic which had delayed it further.

In 2014, the town and country planning department officials had prepared a draft of the development plan but it became redundant as it wasn’t approved by the state Cabinet.