Aabhas Sharma travels to Naya Raipur to find out how Chhatisgarh’s new administrative capital is shaping up
Take a right off National Highway 6A on the outskirts of Raipur city and you will be greeted by wide roads and vast open spaces. There aren’t many signs of development, hardly any people and everything looks eerily similar. Go a little further and you will see frantic activity where the Capitol Complex is coming up. This is Naya Raipur, Chhattisgarh's up and coming planned city, and only the fourth in India, after Ahmedabad, Bhubaneswar and Chandigarh.
The plan for Naya Raipur was finalised in 2002 and the Naya Raipur Development Authority, formerly Capital Area Development Authority, was formed the same year but changes in the political climate created delays. NRDA Chairman SS Bajaj says a project of this magnitude was bound to face many hurdles on various fronts. “It’s a new city we are talking about and big and small glitches have come up every single day,” he says. But why a new city? “Reviving Raipur city with the kind of vision we have for Naya Raipur would have been impossible,” says Bajaj. There were other reasons too — like the fact that since Chhattisgarh was created ten years ago, the state’s secretariat has been running from an old hospital building and its Vidhan Sabha is housed in a central government research centre.
Naya Raipur has about 8,000 hectares demarcated as construction area. Bajaj says in the next two years, people will start moving in. In the first stage, government and administrative offices will be shifted, followed by relocating government employees to special residential colonies. “Our plans are in place and by the next three years you will see residential colonies coming up,” says Bajaj. The projected population for the city in 2031 is 5.6 lakh, according to the plan document.
Investment of Rs 40,000 crore is expected, says Bajaj, adding that according to the master plan, the third and final phase will be complete by 2031. So far, an international cricket stadium has been completed, while work on an Indian Institute of Management and National Law University is almost complete. The government wants Naya Raipur to be an education hub, as part of which an IT institute and many other schools and colleges are also planned.
“Naya Raipur’s design is that of a grid-pattern city plan,” says urban planner Sudeshna Chatterjee, the design consultant for the project. The designers have kept several cities in mind while planning Naya Raipur. For instance, the secretariat is influenced by the one in Kuala Lumpur’s capital complex, Putrajaya. “We are also encouraging local architecture and you will see design elements like Bastar arches and traditional tribal motifs on boundary walls and buildings,” says Chatterjee.
A lot of the projects in the city are based on public-private partnership. Naya Raipur will have a convention centre, five-star hotels (NRDA is in talks with Oberoi and Taj Group) and an IT special economic zone while real estate developer Omaxe is planning a residential township with a golf course. The wide roads have been designed by American company Sheladia. The city will also boast of a bus-based mass transport system with dedicated bus lanes across the city and a new rail line between Raipur and Naya Raipur. An expressway will also connect the two cities.
Chatterjee says the planners don't want the city to become another concrete jungle. “We will make sure the city does not look too cramped,” she adds. The buffer and green zone, for which 22,000 hectares have been set aside, is larger than the area for construction .
But will it be another Gandhinagar, where only government and administrative activities take place? No, says Bajaj emphatically. “We are not rehabilitating Raipur into Naya Raipur but we are making a city which the people of Chhattisgarh will be proud of,” he says.
