Lucknow, March 6 : To speed up development, the Uttar Pradesh government has now permitted the housing development authorities to acquire land for planning large townships and change the usage of the agricultural land.

While aggregating land for creating townships measuring more than 50 acres, the authority's board has been delegated the power to change the original usage of land.

All this while change of land use was carried out with the approval of the government and concerned authority had to put up the file and wait for several months.

From now on the authority would have the power to notify the change without seeking a nod from the housing department as the power has been vested with the board from this month.

A senior officer from Lucknow Development Authority (LDA) said, 'In case proponents of a project wanted to acquire agricultural land to construct an apartment building, an officer was deputed to survey the area and provide his feedback. With recommendation of the board, the file was put up before the housing department. It took months to get the approval thereafter to finally give permission to the developer to start work on the ground.'

The board would now have the power to change the land usage to allow residential projects to come up if the size of the land is 50 acres and a township is being planned within the acquired area.

The authority would be able to take up land use applications within the notified area which is being regulated by the master plan.

Additional chief secretary of the housing department Nitin Ramesh Gokarn said that the change would speed up projects being planned under UP govt's township policy and promote planned urbanisation within key cities.

/IANS