What happened
The Chandigarh Administration notified draft amendments to Master Plan 2031 on May 22, 2026, proposing to raise maximum building heights from 36 feet to 98 feet 5 inches across a city Le Corbusier designed as India's first planned urban experiment. Phase III FAR would jump from 1.2 to 3.0, and 400+ acres of reserve land would be reclassified for commercial use. The amendments bypassed the Chandigarh Heritage Conservation Committee entirely — a step the High Court had flagged as a legal violation. Former Chief Architect Sumit Kaur noted that mandatory Traffic Impact Assessments and seismic vulnerability analyses were never commissioned before the notification was issued. Former MP Pawan Kumar Bansal filed two rounds of formal objections, saying the plan would 'serve only the builder-developer lobby.' Sitting MP Manish Tewari demanded a ward-wise infrastructure blueprint first, citing failed water supply pilots and ongoing waste management issues. The High Court had also scrapped a related Tribune Chowk flyover proposal just days earlier. The screening committee continues to review objections. No impact studies have been ordered yet.