Satellite Imagery for Sonamarg | HC grants SDA month’s time to complete process

Srinagar, Feb 28:  The High Court of J&K and Ladakh Wednesday granted a month’s more time to the Sonamarg Development Authority (SDA) to complete the process of satellite imagery for the Sonamarg health resort.

A division bench of Chief Justice N Kotiswar Singh and Justice Wasim Sadiq Nargal granted time to the authority following perusal of the status report filed by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of SDA.

The report was filed in compliance with an order the court had passed in its suo moto Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking directions to the government about the preservation and conservation of Sonmarg health resort.

The report indicated that the SDA promptly requested assistance from the Deputy Commissioner (DC), Ganderbal Regional Director, Ecology, Environment and Remote Sensing Department, J&K, and Chief Town Planner (CTP), Town Planning Organisation, Kashmir, for processing of data on the satellite imagery and completion of the report in keeping with the order passed by the court on August 31, 2023.

In response, the CTP Kashmir has submitted a report to the SDA indicating that the Town Planning Organisation digitised the master plan, and land use plan, and after overlaying it on the procured satellite imagery from NRSC, the digitisation of land use features building footprints have been done for generating comparative statistics (draft stage) on category-wise land use achieved on the ground concerning the land use earmarked proposed in the Master Plan.

The CTP Kashmir reported that the Sonamarg Master Plan 2005-2025 was prepared by the Town Planning Organisation Kashmir in AutoCAD Software.

The CTP Kashmir pointed out that a certain degree of error, both in terms of area and location is bound to occur while analysing the master plan with that of ground conditions, for the reason that high precision satellite data, high-resolution imagery, and GIS mapping was not available during the preparation of the master plan.

The CTP Kashmir reported that the exercise was likely to take a month or so to carry out the necessary ground validation of the image interpretation.

It said that after cross-validation of the data, the final report should be submitted to the High Court.