Big, bigger Almost a third of the entire Nagpur district, that is 3,780 sq km, will be brought under the metropolitan region. Of this 1,520 sq km will be taken up under the first phase of development. About 70 per cent of this is agricultural land. The plan to expand the city comes in the wake of real estate boom
Click to enlarge view

The Nagpur Improvement Trust, which carries out development work in the city, has come up with what it calls a pro-poor land-acquisition plan. Social activists, however, warn that under the city expansion and development plan a large number of farmers and rural poor will lose their land for a pittance.

The trust proposes to acquire land for free and return 60 per cent of it to the owners after development, though not necessarily the same piece of land. The chairperson of the trust, Shyam Tagde, says this pattern, used by the Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority, has been adopted keeping in view the high cost of land and complications involved in acquisition.

Complications are expected given the scale of the project. Around a third of the entire Nagpur district