For the lakhs of traders and shopkeepers, affected by the court-ordered sealing drive and facing the crunch of adequate commercial space in the national capital, this could very well be the blueprint for a solution.

Its author is senior advocate Rakesh Khanna, one of the nine Court Commissioners working with the monitoring committee set up by the Delhi High Court. It was first submitted to the monitoring committee, comprising retired IPS officers B L Vohra and R S Gupta besides a CBI official R K Mishra.

Khanna’s report, which has since been also submitted to the Supreme Court monitoring committee, offers a sweeping range of solutions: from identifying available space across the city to freeing up space trapped in bus-depots, next to railway lines and even open drains. It also offers a detailed time-bound plan for matching the available space with the affected traders. The main recommendations of the Khanna report:

• Authorities should consider large chunks of land lying unutilised in the heart of the city. For instance, 51 acres of CPWD land at Anand Parbat, near Liberty cinema hall in Karol Bagh. And 97 bighas in village Shadara Khurd, a large portion of DDA land towards the north-eastern side of Defence Colony abutting the railway line between Nizamuddin and Jangpura flyover.

• At the core of the report is a proposal to effectively use 22 District Centres which were proposed to be developed in the city by 2001. Of them, 10 are at various stages of development while the others are yet to take off. Acknowledging that the DDA has its task cut out, Khanna’s report says that plots are available in almost all these centres for development of commercial sites, including shops.

... contd.