Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Feb 28: The High Court today directed the Sonamarg Development Authority (SDA) to submit a report indicating satellite imagery of the various constructions and facilities already existing on the Sonamarg.
The Division Bench comprising Chief Justice N Kotiswar Singh and Justice Wasim Sadiq Nargal extended the time after the court was apprised that the matter with regard to satellite imagery of the various constructions/facilities already existing on the Sonamarg Tourist Resort by identifying each and every such construction has been taken up with the concerned departments and to prepare the report some time is required.
The DB sought this exercise in order to enable the court to examine that these constructions/ land use are within the permissible limit as mentioned in the Master Plan.
The CEO SDA in his compliance report submitted that the SDA took up the matter with concerned departments keeping in view technicalities involved in the preparation of the said report as directed by the court.
In this regard the SDA has promptly requested and sought assistance from the Deputy Commissioner, Ganderbal Regional Director, Ecology, Environment & Remote Sensing Department, J&K and Chief Town Planner, Town Planning Organization, Kashmir for processing of Data on the Satellite Imagery and completion of the report as per the Court directions.
The Chief Town Planner with reference to the technical support from the SDA informed the court that the Town Planning Organization digitized the Master Plan/Land use Plan and after overlaying it on the procured Satellite imagery from NRSC, the digitization of land use features building footprints have been done for generating comparative statistics (Draft stage) on category wise land use achieved on ground with respect to the land use earmarked proposed in the Master Plan
“Sonamarg Master Plan 2005-2025 was prepared by Town Planning Organization Kashmir in Auto CAD Software. A certain degree of error both in terms of area and location/shift is bound to occur while analyzing the master plan with that of ground conditions/reality, the reason being that a high precision satellite data /high resolution imagery and GIS mapping was not available during the preparation of the Master Plan. Moreover, it is pertinent to mention here that the companson/ study /analysis made cannot be between non-Scalable/ Non- Referenced system with that of Referenced/ Scalable system Inferences or statistical analysis drawn out of these can be made accurate”, the CTP said.
He, as such, submitted that the exercise is still likely to take a month or so for carrying out the necessary ground validation of the image interpretation and with respect to master plan preparation. After cross validation of the data, the final report shall be submitted to the High Court.
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