How Green Zone Dilution In Draft NCR Plan 2041 Defied Objections

Even Environment Ministry’s Suggestion To Retain NCZs Was Overlooked

- Dipak Dash & Ipsita Pati

New Delhi/Gurgaon: If the feedback exercise for a policy document is meant to tell its drafters what they did right and where they went wrong, responses to the proposed NCR Regional Plan 2041 have an unambiguous message for the NCR Planning Board.

Of the objections and suggestions it received on the draft – a critical policy paper because it sets the contours of how the region will develop over the next two decades, balancing ecology and development – 95% were on the proposal altering ‘natural conservation zones (NCZ)’ to ‘natural zones (NZ)’.

As the nomenclature itself shows, an area categorised as NZ doesn’t require mandatory conservation, like an NCZs does. NCZs are primarily ecologically sensitive areas, including Aravali tracts – large swathes of which are in Haryana – that restrict construction to only 0.5% of their total area.

It wasn’t just public feedback that aired the concern on this proposed sweeping change. The Union environment and forest ministry too flagged shrinking of areas under NCZs, wanted the term ‘NCZ’ retained as per the NCR Plan 2021, and asked for the inclusion of a detailed land use plan, for NCZs and all of NCR, in the new plan.