Bhubaneswar’s extended CDP 2040 has reached an important but unresolved stage: the surveys, consultations, objections process and map revisions are substantially complete, yet the final gazette notification that would give the plan legal force is still pending. The delay matters because the plan covers 364 additional villages spread across 691 sq km, an area where urbanisation is already advancing without a formally enforceable framework for land use, transport, housing, environmental protection and infrastructure.
The immediate issue is administrative, but its consequences are spatial. Until the extended plan is notified, residents, landowners, developers and public agencies do not have a definitive statutory blueprint for how the expanded planning area should grow. At the same time, the Bhubaneswar Development Authority is preparing a new GIS-based Comprehensive Development Plan that would integrate the city’s existing and expanded areas under a unified framework up to 2040. This creates a sequencing problem: the older extended plan is awaiting legal approval while another planning exercise is already under way.
That gap is particularly significant for a city that has expanded far beyond its original scale. Bhubaneswar was initially planned for a population of around 40,000. It now houses more than 1.1 million people and has developed into a regional centre for education, tourism, healthcare and technology-driven investment. The pressure on the city is therefore not limited to its established urban core. Peripheral villages are increasingly part of the city’s functional growth, even when governance and planning systems have not fully caught up with that expansion.
The extended CDP was intended to bring those areas within a common planning framework. The existing planning area covers 205 villages over 419 sq km. The proposed extension adds 364 villages and 691 sq km. Together, the figures indicate the scale of the territory that must be coordinated if Bhubaneswar is to grow as a connected urban region rather than as a collection of separate, unevenly serviced settlements.
A plan of this scale is not simply a land-use map. It determines how future roads, housing, public facilities, transport links and infrastructure networks can be organised. It also establishes the basis for protecting environmentally sensitive areas and managing the conversion of rural land for urban purposes. Without a notified plan, decisions in the expanding fringe can become fragmented, making later infrastructure provision more expensive and limiting the authority’s ability to create coherent urban form.
The notification process has already involved several formal stages. The draft CDP was first published in the Odisha Gazette on March 2, 2024, inviting objections and suggestions. The draft received nearly 1,000 objections and suggestions. After land records were updated, a fresh notification covering 35 villages was issued in October 2025, followed by another round of consultations and public hearings. The material supplied in the report indicates that the statutory process has therefore involved repeated public and technical scrutiny rather than a single administrative action.
Md Qaisar Iqbal Ali, planning member of the BDA, said the matter was currently before the board of enquiry and that the final notification would be issued after its recommendation. His statement establishes the immediate procedural next step, but it also confirms that the plan has not yet acquired the legal status required for enforcement.
This distinction between preparation and notification is central to understanding the problem. Surveys, technical plans, consultations and revised maps can establish the evidence base for development control, but they do not by themselves create an enforceable planning regime. The final gazette notification is the point at which the plan becomes an official instrument that authorities can apply to decisions affecting land use and development.
For citizens in the expanding villages, the uncertainty can affect how land is used and how future services are planned. For public agencies, it can complicate the alignment of roads, transport systems, drainage, housing and other infrastructure with a settled spatial framework. For investors and developers, the absence of a final notified plan can make the regulatory environment less certain. The supplied report does not quantify individual project delays or identify specific disputed parcels, but it makes clear that the broader planning framework remains unsettled.
The timing also reveals a deeper institutional challenge. The BDA has already begun work on a fresh GIS-based master plan intended to integrate the existing CDP with the expanded planning area. The proposed framework includes transit-oriented development, climate-resilient infrastructure, mixed-use zones, affordable housing strategies, flood mitigation and sustainable tourism infrastructure. These objectives reflect the range of pressures now facing Bhubaneswar, but they also raise a practical question about how successive planning documents will relate to one another.
The immediate priority, according to urban planner Dipu Nanda, should be notification of the extended CDP before another planning exercise proceeds. Nanda’s argument, as reported, is that years of surveys, consultations and technical work cannot produce development outcomes unless the plan is formally brought into force. This is not a disagreement over whether the city needs better planning. It is a question of whether planning instruments are being completed in an order that allows them to guide decisions on the ground.
The proposed new plan’s focus on transit-oriented development and mixed-use zones suggests that the BDA is attempting to move beyond conventional expansion. If implemented through an enforceable framework, these approaches could connect land-use decisions with transport and infrastructure provision. Similarly, the inclusion of affordable housing and flood mitigation indicates that the authority recognises that peripheral growth cannot be managed only through road widening or the release of land for construction.
However, the supplied material does not establish whether these proposals have been finalised, notified or backed by funding and implementation agencies. Nor does it provide a timetable for the new GIS-based plan or details of how its provisions would interact with the extended CDP 2040. Those unanswered questions are important because a planning document’s influence depends not only on its stated objectives but also on its legal status, administrative ownership and ability to guide public investment.
Bhubaneswar’s numbers make the planning challenge difficult to treat as a routine paperwork delay. A city planned for approximately 40,000 people now has more than 1.1 million residents. Its existing planning area covers 419 sq km and 205 villages, while the proposed extension adds 691 sq km and 364 villages. The expanded territory is therefore larger than the existing planning area in both land area and number of villages. That scale means the notification will shape the conditions under which a substantial part of the city-region urbanises.
The wider urban question is whether institutional planning systems can keep pace with the speed and geography of growth. Bhubaneswar’s expansion into surrounding villages is already a physical reality. The unresolved CDP shows that legal and administrative recognition can move more slowly than settlement growth, land transactions and infrastructure demand. When that happens, the city risks making development decisions without the integrated framework that was designed to coordinate them.
The evidence currently confirms three points. The extended CDP 2040 has undergone multiple rounds of notification, consultation and technical revision; its final gazette notification is still pending; and the BDA is simultaneously preparing a broader GIS-based planning exercise. What remains unclear is when the board of enquiry will submit its recommendation, when the final notification will be issued and how the notified plan will be aligned with the proposed new master plan. Those procedural milestones will determine whether Bhubaneswar’s next phase of expansion is guided by an enforceable framework or continues in an institutional grey zone.
