Delhi Metro Rail/Property Development

The Public Notice of 16 December 2002 pertains to conversion of nearly 87 hectares of land along the just commissioned 8.3 km long first corridor from primarily residential / green / riverbed use to commercial / transportation use. Although the city has read every day for three months every trivial detail of the frills that Delhi Metro comes with as well as the political bickering among city politicians over who would inaugurate it, control it, own it, it remains quite unaware of this Public Notice.
 
There is hardly any professional or public debate on if, how much and what type of property development around the metro corridor might be good for the metro as well as the city. Our Metro Corporation has only been plaintively speaking of revenue generation. This is even as it has already got international assistance, tax waivers and cheap power tariffs and there is talk of a metro tax. And our Development Authority has only been resignedly saying it-will-happen-anyway. This is even as its studies for the ongoing Master Plan revision may well have told it that in many, if not most, development needs to be limited not relaxed. With these inadequate justifications property development ideas are rolling full-steam ahead and the real estate market, gone sluggish on account of serious water and power problems, is already looking up.
 
The Public Notice for the first corridor does provide an opportunity to at least raise issues that must be addressed vis-�-vis property development vis-�-vis the metro. I am posting here excerpts from the objection that I have filed. Others, especially urban professionals, might want to do the same.