Former Chief Architect Opposes Chandigarh Master Plan

June

2026

The Chandigarh Administration quietly notified draft amendments to the Chandigarh Master Plan (CMP) 2031—the statutory document that governs every building, road, open space, and land use in the city on 22 May, and added a supplementary addendum on 29 May. Together they propose—doubling and tripling the Floor Area Ratio (that determines how much built-up space can exist on a plot) across residential, institutional, industrial, and peripheral zones, increasing building heights in several areas to 30 metres (approximately 10 storeys), imposing the stilt-plus-four, and stilt-plus-five building formats on neighborhoods that were never structurally designed for them, opening industrial plots to mixed residential and commercial use, and reclassifying over 400 acres of the city’s finite reserve land for commercial development. Former chief architect Sumit Kaur, who led the technical formulation of the CMP 2031, sought the withdrawal of the draft amendments to the plan, arguing that they would fundamentally alter the city’s planning philosophy, compromise its heritage character, and overburden its infrastructure. Kaur submitted a detailed 20-page representation to the Chief Architect and made oral submissions before the screening committee on 26 Jun. Kaur argued that the proposed changes go far beyond routine planning revisions and amount to a wholesale recasting of Chandigarh’s urban form. Chandigarh came into being when it was commissioned by the Government of India in 1948 as a new capital for Panjab. Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Jane Drew, and Maxwell Fry designed and built the city but the new plan alters their vision. On 29 May, the Punjab and Haryana High Court (PHHC) pronounced its judgment scrapping the proposed flyover at Tribune Chowk, Chandigarh. PHHC held that CMP 2031, ‘is inviolable and every provision of the same is mandatory in nature.’ It can be changed only by following the same rigorous procedure by which it was made—public notification, objections, and a Board of Inquiry and Hearing. The Urban Planning Department was not even consulted before the Engineering Department decided to build the flyover—a procedural failure the court found deeply troubling. The final public hearing on the controversial draft amendments to the CMP 2031, however, concluded on 28 Jun. A nine-member screening committee will now review over 100 submitted recommendations, and hand over its definitive report to the administration within four weeks.