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The City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra Ltd., was a necessity and Navi Mumbai- the land of comforts and luxuries - is its invention.
In the decade of 1951-61 population of Mumbai rose by 40 per cent and in the corresponding decade it shot up by 43.80 percent. The rapid growth rate of population made possible by the increasing industrial and commercial importance of the city, resulted in a fast deterioration in the quality of life for the majority of people living in the city. Development inputs could not keep pace with the rapidly growing population, industry, trade and commerce. Besides, there were physical limitations to the growth of the city built on long and narrow peninsula, which had very few connections with the mainland.
On realising the emerging problem, in 1958 the then Government of Bombay appointed a study group under the Chairmanship of S.G. Barve, Secretary of the Public Works Department, to consider the problems of traffic congestion, deficiency of open spaces and play fields, shortage of housing and over-concentration of industry in the metropolitan and suburban areas of the city, and to recommend specific measures to deal with these.
The Barve Group submitted its report in February, 1959. One of its major recommendations was that a rail-cum-road bridge be built across the Thane Creek to connect peninsular Bombay with the mainland. The Group felt that the bridge would accelerate development across the Creek, relieve pressure on the city's railways and roadways, and draw away industrial and residential concentrations eastward to the mainland. The Group hoped that the eastward development would be orderly and would take place in a planned manner.
The Government of Maharashtra accepted the Barve Group recommendation. To examine metropolitan problems in a regional context the government appointed another committee chaired by Prof. D.R. Gadgil, then Director of the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune in March, 1965. The committee was asked to formulate broad principles of regional planning for the metropolitan regions of Bombay. Panvel and Pune and make recommendations for the establishment of Metropolitan Authorities for preparation and execution of such plans.
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