Master Plan for civic body to be ready soon

15 villages to be merged into Rajahmundry Corporation Rajahmundry: The master plan for Rajahmundry Municipality is at last being finalised after overcoming many obstacles. The preparation of draft plan that is the last step to formulate the master plan is going on. A meeting was held at Rajahmundry Municipal Corporation office by all the government and private agencies concerned in connection with the formulation of the new plan on Friday. The officials speeded up steps to draw the draft map as per the directions of the town and country plan director. An agency from Hyderabad, RV Associates, which was given the task of formulating the master plan, is busy preparing the draft map. Satellite pictures were taken earlier to formulate the master plan. Later, the draft plan would be prepared and it would be displayed in the Corporation office after taking public opinion according to a regulation to estimate the present conditions. The municipal authorities have made it clear on Friday that the master plan would be formulated within two months. Meanwhile, 15 villages adjacent to Rajahmundry are going to be merged into the Corporation, as per the master plan. The villages within five km would be included. With this merger, the areas of the Rajahmundry municipal corporation would be increased from 44 sq km to 88 sq km. In the meeting held on Friday, suggestions were taken from the government departments including Panchayathiraj, irrigation, electricity, police and roads and buildings and from the public sector units like ONGC and GAIL. It was suggested at the meeting that the number of bus stations should be increased to cater to the needs of passengers from the merged villages. Issues like construction of residential colonies in the lands earmarked for the industries and on agriculture lands and other issues like road widening, setting up of traffic signals and expansion of the highway were also discussed. Regional Deputy Director, town planning, Ramakrishna Reddy, Rajahmundry Municipal Commissioner M Jitendra, representatives of the RV Associates, officials from various departments and the representatives of ONGC and Gail took part.