Management professionals term Delhi Master Plan biased

NEW DELHI: Management professionals have raised objections to the Delhi Master Plan 2021, saying it’s biased in favour of certain professional groups. “There’s no way a lawyer practising out of home can be justified while a management consultant doing the same is objectionable,” a spokesperson of IIM-Ahemdabad Alumni Association said.

The Delhi Master Plan 2021 had recently added five new categories of professionals who can operate from their own/rented residential premises. This includes company secretary, cost and works accountants, engineer, town planner , media professionals and documentary film maker. This was done in addition to the earlier list of four professionals: doctors, lawyers, architects, chartered accountants.

The association is taking the matter up with concerned policy quarters including the Union Urban Development Ministry and Delhi government. In a white paper submitted to various sections in the policy quarters, the association says, “It is distressing and discriminatory for several management consultants who have been excluded from this expanded list.”

The association is now pressing for inclusion of eight new professional categories comprising independent directors, strategy consultants, HR consultants, project consultants, marketing consultants, financial consultants, communications/advertising consultants and public relations consultants.

The association’s white-paper on the issue argues, “One of the key objectives of the Master Plan is to minimize the nuisance caused to a residential area by a professional activity.

In this regard it needs to be highlighted that management consultants typically operate with very few staff members as compared to other permissible categories and generate very few footfalls to their offices as they primarily deal with corporate clients, whose offices they have to visit for discussions.

As compared to this, doctors, lawyers and CAs generate huge traffic to their offices since their customers are primarily individuals, causing very high nuisance value to residential areas.”

Sources in the Delhi government, however, say that inclusion of new categories to the existing list may not be possible on an immediate basis. “This matter has been under consideration for quite some time now, but top policy makers have expressed reservations, on the ground that if the list keeps expanding, the whole idea of specific zoning will be diluted,” an official in the Delhi government said.