The long-delayed Master Plan for Belagavi city and 55 villages in the taluka has once again run into trouble, with the Belagavi Urban Development Authority (BUDA) cancelling the recently awarded contract due to the contractor’s failure to comply with tender conditions.
According to BUDA officials, after the contractor was selected through the tender process, a Letter of Acceptance was issued. As per rules, the work order can be issued only after the contractor deposits the mandatory security amount. However, the contractor failed to pay the deposit within the stipulated time. Even after BUDA issued a notice seeking clarification, there was no response. Left with no option, BUDA initiated the cancellation process and formally scrapped the contract.
With this, the entire tendering process will have to be restarted, leading to yet another delay in preparing the Master Plan—an important document expected to guide the planned development and land use of Belagavi city and surrounding villages for the next 20 years.
The delay is not new. Belagavi’s existing Master Plan expired in March 2021, and a revised plan was expected well before that. In 2020, under the AMRUT scheme, the state government had entrusted the work to a private firm, E-GIS. Although work began after the COVID-19 period, disputes arose between the Urban Development Department and the company over bill payments, eventually leading to cancellation of that contract as well.
Subsequently, responsibility for preparing the Master Plan was transferred directly to BUDA. The authority floated tenders twice, but both attempts failed due to poor response. The third tender finally saw a contractor being selected—only for the process to collapse again due to non-compliance.
In the absence of an updated Master Plan, planned development in Belagavi city and taluka has been severely affected. Approvals for non-agricultural land use in many villages remain on hold, causing uncertainty and hardship for landowners and investors.
With repeated tender failures and administrative hurdles, the future roadmap for Belagavi’s urban and rural development continues to remain uncertain, even as citizens wait for a long-overdue Master Plan to take shape.