Due to absence of professional planners, Jammu and Kashmir is bracing up for a major crisis in the implementation of developmental projects as haphazard constructions are coming up across the state.
Officials said the job of planning had been entrusted to engineers, architects and draftsmen, who lacked basic knowledge of drafting plans for growing cities and towns.
For a population of 12.55 million, J&K needs over 100 planners to plan development of cities and towns. “But, we have only five on the job, with two of them working in non-planning departments,” a senior official told Kashmir Post.
Instead of appointing professional planners, he said the state government employed graduates from statistics background in the Planning and Development Department and later posted them as planners in cities and towns.
At district and block levels, the state government has Chief Planning Officers and Block Planning Officers, respectively, but none of them is a professional. “They all have statistics background and can best be used for distribution and utilisation of funds. Planning is not mathematical or statistical jugglery. It is an art,” he said.
The absence of professional planners in civic bodies and tourism development authorities has put a big hurdle in streamlining development, the official said.
“J&K doesn’t have a master plan in place for cities, towns and tourist resorts because we haven’t employed professional planners. Promoting draftsmen in the Planning and Development Department will only add problems in the system,” he added.
Officials attribute the lack of planners to the absence of academic courses in educational institutions of the state. “The government has to introduce planning courses in architecture colleges of the state at an earliest and then employ planners from there,” he added.
Despite being established in 1886, the Srinagar Municipal Corporation doesn’t have any professional planner on board and grants building permission on the basis of building by-laws.
The state presently has two municipal corporations, six municipal councils and 70 municipal committees.
Lack of professional planners leading to haphazard growth across J&K
