ISLAMABAD: The process to send and receive summaries still continues for the composition of a commission to revise the master plan of Islamabad as another summary has been sent by the Capital Development Authority (CDA) to the federal government for approval.

This time, the CDA has reduced the number of proposed members of the commission from 20 to 15. Several names of experts of previous panels have been replaced with new ones.

The latest summary, which CDA recently sent to the ministry of interior for onward submission to the federal cabinet, carried several new names.

Sharing the details of the new summary, sources in the interior ministry told Dawn that the CDA wanted a 15-member commission. According to the summary, the new commission, if approved by the cabinet, will be headed by the CDA chairman as the convener and it will have three urban planners (Aslam Mughal, Jahangir Sherpao, Khurram Farid). Executive Vice President Nespak Lahore Dawood Rana will be a member as a transportation planning specialist.

Number of members in latest summary sent to govt by CDA reduced from 20 to 15, says official

Meanwhile, the summary also carried the name of a retired bureaucrat of Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS), Syed Rizwan Mehboob, as an environmentalist.

The sources said that Dr Naveed Iftikhar will be new member as urban economist while the name of a resident of Islamabad, Raja Changzeb Sultan - from village Shakarparian - has also been proposed as a representative of the villages in Islamabad. The names of Barrister Qasim Chauhan, lawyer of the Supreme Court, and Abdullah Khan (architect) have also been proposed as members.

In addition, Deputy Commissioner Islamabad, Member Planning CDA, Member Environment, Director General Pakistan Environment Protection Agency and the Director General Planning will be ex-officio members of the proposed commission.

The revision of the master plan of Islamabad has been facing an inordinate delay of decades.

Doxiadis Associates, a Greece-based firm that prepared the master plan, had recommended its revision after every 20 years in accordance with the needs of the time. However, successive governments did not bother to make proper revision rather kept focusing on selective changes without any input from professionals, resulting in poor planning in the capital city.

So far, 45 changes have been made to the original master plan by federal cabinets. On the other hand, Islamabad has been facing rapid growth in its population.

“The face of Islamabad has already been de-shaped because of the negligence of CDA. Here, you will find dozens of slums in the city area while thousands of unauthorised buildings have already been constructed in various parts of the city. So revision of the master plan is imperative,” said an official source.

Earlier, when the PTI government came to power in 2018, it announced that the master plan would be revised and the then prime minister Imran Khan also formed a commission. However, the commission prepared an interim report in 2020 which was mostly related to building by-laws and regularisation of certain areas, including Banigala. It left the revision of the master plan to an expert firm which could not be hired by CDA.

Meanwhile, the commission became inactive after completing its tenure. Since then, the new commission could not be formed to move forward.

The caretaker government led by Anwaarul Haq Kakar had also expressed its interest in approving names to reconstitute the commission, but to no avail.

On the directive of the caretakers, CDA had sent a summary to the government proposing names of experts to reconstitute the commission. That summary could not be placed before the cabinet for approval before completion of the tenure of the caretaker government.

However, through an official letter dated July 2, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi directed the CDA chairman to brief him about the reconstitution of the commission prior to placing the summary before the cabinet.

Subsequently, the CDA a couple of weeks ago prepared a summary proposing the names of 15 members, which is yet to be placed before the cabinet for approval.

Published in Dawn, October 7th, 2024