Civic officials disclosed that they were planning to set up a separate cell to deal with non-agricultural cases as they expect the administration would be heavily burdened with the work following the merger of 38 fringe villages.

It may recalled that Governor P C Alexander had promulgated an ordinance on August 6, empowering municipal commissioners and chief executive officers of the municipal councils to take decision on non-agricultural proposals. Earlier, the decision on NA proposals were taken by the district collectors.

Sources said the decision on transferring district collector's powers to the local planning authorities was taken to meet the increasing problem of unauthorised constructions on borders of urban centres and metropolitan cities.

Afer promulgating the ordinance, the State Government subsequently issued a resolution on September 23. The resolution has made a major amendment in Maharashtra Land Revenue Code (MLRC) 1966. According to the resolution, the PMC will now be in position to clear any NA proposal, take penal action against any non-agricultural activity, being run without obtaining NA permission, to regularise non-agricultural activity on agricultural land, if possible, to recover NA charges and charge NA charges from the new parties after allowing NA proposals.

The resolution has made it clear that the PMC was supposed to clear any NA proposal within a period of one-month after submitting the proposal. If the administration failed to clear the proposal within stipulated period, it would be required to send written explanation to the concerned person or parties.

The GR is expected to make a major impact on the development of the city because of increasing unauthorised constructions in suburbs. A number of unauthorised constructions have come up in the recent years in the suburbs. The civic officials maintain that most of the buildings had been constructed without obtaining NA permissions. The civic administration has been caught in a dilemma since neither it can not take action against the unauthorised constructions on humanitarian grounds nor it could regularise them. A proposal prepared by Arun Bhatia in April this year is pending with the general body.

The gravity of the problem of the agricultural land can be judged from the fact that out of 430 square km area of the municipal corporation, 35 per cent land is still being used for the agricultural purposes while 12 per cent land is being considered fertile for the cultivation. The civic sources said that there were six agricultural zones in the development plan of the city including Hadapsar, Karvenagar, Wanworie, Pashan, Aundh and Bibwewadi. The PMC has already sent a formal proposal to the State Government seeking permission of converting these zones into non-agricultural zones. The proposal is still pending with the government.