Chapter XIX of the New Delhi Municipal Council Act, 1994 is compact — five sections, 334 to 338 — but it carries the heaviest planning power the Council possesses: the authority to tear a decayed area down and lay it out afresh. An improvement scheme lets the Chairperson re-arrange streets, demolish unfit buildings, redistribute sites, acquire land and re-house the displaced, all inside one statutory instrument. The price of that power is discipline. Every scheme must pass the Council, secure the Central Government's sanction, and — the master limitation — conform to the Master Plan for Delhi or the relevant zonal development plan. This chapter studies that machinery alongside the building-control regime in Chapter XIV, and threads through the Supreme Court's town-planning jurisprudence on open spaces, unauthorised construction and the inviolability of the plan. For the wider architecture of the Council's authority, read this chapter with the notes on the Council's constitution and powers and on property tax, and against the full NDMC Act hub.
Where “improvement” sits in the scheme of the Act
The NDMC Act is organised by function. Chapters XI to XVIII give the Council the routine machinery of civic government — water and drainage, electricity, streets (Chapter XIII, ss. 202–234), building regulations (Chapter XIV, ss. 235–260), sanitation, public safety and markets. Chapter XIX, headed simply “Improvement”, sits on top of that ordinary machinery. It is not a routine maintenance power; it is a power of area-wide reconstruction, invoked only when a locality has decayed to the point that piecemeal repair will not save it.
The distinction matters because it determines the procedural burden. A single dangerous building can be dealt with under s. 258 (removal of dangerous buildings) or by an order of demolition under s. 247 — administrative acts the Chairperson takes on his own satisfaction, subject to appeal. An improvement scheme, by contrast, re-orders an entire neighbourhood, and the Act surrounds it with three filters: framing by the Chairperson, approval by the Council, and sanction by the Central Government (ss. 334 and 336). The heavier the interference with property and settled use, the heavier the statutory check — a structural principle the Supreme Court has repeatedly read into town-planning legislation, most influentially in Bangalore Medical Trust v. B.S. Muddappa, AIR 1991 SC 1902, where the Court treated the planning scheme as a charter to be obeyed, not a convenience to be bent. The relationship of these powers to the Council's general competence is taken up in the notes on the constitution and powers of the Council.
Section 334: the trigger for an improvement scheme
Section 334 sets the threshold. The Chairperson may frame an improvement scheme only where, “upon information in his possession”, he is satisfied as respects any area on two cumulative limbs. The first, clause (a), is a condition test: that the buildings in the area are, by reason of disrepair or sanitary defects, unfit for human habitation, or are by reason of their bad arrangement — or the narrowness or bad arrangement of the streets, or the want of light, air, ventilation or proper conveniences — dangerous or injurious to the health of the inhabitants. The second, clause (b), is a remedy test: that the most satisfactory method of dealing with those conditions is the re-arrangement and reconstruction of the streets and buildings in accordance with an improvement scheme.
Two features of the drafting repay attention. First, satisfaction must rest on “information in his possession” — the power is not arbitrary; it presupposes a factual record of decay that can, in principle, be tested. Second, both limbs must be met: it is not enough that buildings are old or unfit (limb a) unless area-wide reconstruction is genuinely the most satisfactory response (limb b). Where targeted enforcement would suffice, the heavier improvement machinery is not the appropriate route. The framing itself must follow “the bye-laws made in this behalf”, so the Council's subordinate legislation under Chapter XXI supplies the procedural detail — survey, mapping, costing and notice — that s. 334 leaves to be filled in.
Section 335: what a scheme may provide for
Section 335(1) is the working heart of the chapter. It enumerates fourteen matters — clauses (a) to (n) — that an improvement scheme “may provide for all or any of”. The list is enabling, not mandatory: a scheme need not exercise every power, but it cannot exercise a power the section does not contain. The clauses fall into recognisable planning categories.
Land assembly and re-arrangement: clause (a) permits acquisition “by agreement or under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894” of any property necessary for or affected by the scheme; clause (b) the relaying out of land; clause (c) the redistribution of sites belonging to owners within the scheme. Clearance: clause (d) the closure or demolition of buildings unfit for human habitation, and clause (e) the demolition of obstructive buildings. Construction and infrastructure: clauses (f) and (g) cover construction and reconstruction of buildings and the construction and alteration of streets; clause (h) water supply, street lighting, electric supply, drainage and other conveniences; clause (j) sanitary arrangements; clause (l) facilities for communication. Amenity and accommodation: clause (i) the provision of open spaces for the benefit of the area; clause (k) accommodation for any class of inhabitants. Disposal: clause (m) the sale, letting or exchange of any property comprised in the scheme. The residuary clause (n) lets the Chairperson provide for “any other matter” expedient for the improvement of the area — read ejusdem generis with the enumerated heads, not as a free-standing licence.
The reference in clause (a) to the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 must now be read in light of the repeal and replacement of that Act by the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013; under s. 114 read with the General Clauses Act, statutory references to the 1894 Act operate through the successor legislation. The acquisition power is the scheme's sharpest edge, and it is also where most litigation has clustered — because compulsory acquisition for a planning purpose engages both the public-purpose requirement and, since open spaces are involved, the line of authority discussed below.
The ten-year acquisition safeguard in section 335(2)–(3)
Sub-sections (2) and (3) of s. 335 contain an owner-protective device that examiners and practitioners frequently overlook. Where land is designated in a scheme as subject to acquisition, or is required by the scheme to be kept as an open space, the planning designation does not entitle the Council to leave the land in indefinite limbo. If, at the expiration of ten years from the date of sanction of the scheme by the Central Government under s. 336(2), the land has not been acquired, the owner may serve a notice on the Chairperson requiring his interest in the land to be acquired (s. 335(2)).
Sub-section (3) supplies the sanction for inaction: if the Chairperson fails to acquire the land within six months of receiving that notice, the improvement scheme takes effect, after those six months, as if the land had never been designated for acquisition or required to be kept as an open space — in effect, the designation lapses and the owner is freed from the planning freeze. This is the NDMC Act's answer to the constitutional vice of “planning blight”: reserving private land for a public purpose and then sitting on it indefinitely without paying for it. The provision recognises that a designation which sterilises land must either be honoured by acquisition or surrendered. It echoes the reasoning the Supreme Court applied to private layout reservations in Pt. Chet Ram Vashist v. Municipal Corporation of Delhi, (1995) 1 SCC 47, where the Court refused to let an authority appropriate reserved open space without acquisition, holding that designation confers at most a custodial right in the public interest, not free ownership.
Section 336: Council approval and Central Government sanction
Section 336 imposes the two outer filters. Under sub-section (1), every improvement scheme, as soon as may be after framing, must be submitted by the Chairperson to the Council, which may (i) approve it without modification, (ii) approve it with such modifications as it considers necessary, or (iii) reject it with directions to the Chairperson to frame a fresh scheme according to those directions. The Council is thus the political-deliberative gatekeeper, and its modification power lets it reshape rather than merely accept or veto. The composition and decision-making of that body are the subject of the constitution and powers notes, and the manner in which it transacts such business is treated in conduct of business and committees.
Sub-section (2) supplies the decisive validity rule: “No improvement scheme approved by the Council under sub-section (1) shall be valid unless it has been sanctioned by the Central Government.” Central sanction is therefore a condition of validity, not a mere formality — an unsanctioned scheme is a nullity, and any acquisition, demolition or disposal purportedly carried out under it is without authority of law. The structure mirrors the wider supervisory architecture of the Act, where the Central Government retains control over the New Delhi area as the seat of national government (reflected, for building matters, in the Central Government's general superintendence under s. 235 and its bye-law powers under s. 260). For aspirants, the safe formulation is: framed by the Chairperson, approved by the Council, valid only on Central sanction.
Section 337: the re-housing scheme
Improvement is destructive before it is constructive: clearing unfit buildings and re-arranging sites necessarily displaces occupants. Section 337 addresses that human consequence. While framing an improvement scheme, the Chairperson may also frame a separate scheme — the “re-housing scheme” — for the construction, maintenance and management of such area and so many buildings as he considers necessary to provide accommodation for persons “likely to be displaced by the execution of the improvement scheme”.
The re-housing scheme is companion legislation to the improvement scheme: it is optional in form (“may”), but in substance it gives statutory recognition to the principle that planned reconstruction should not simply expel the existing population. The drafting is forward-looking — it speaks of persons “likely to be displaced”, allowing accommodation to be planned in advance of clearance rather than scrambled together afterwards. Because the re-housing scheme is “framed under this Chapter”, it attracts the same outer disciplines: it must clear the Master-Plan conformity gate in s. 338 (which expressly names both schemes) and, being part of the improvement exercise, it is carried through the same approval and sanction process. The provision sits within the Act's broader social-welfare obligations, complementing the slum-clearance and habitability concerns that animate s. 334's first limb.
Section 338: conformity with the Master Plan and zonal development plan
Section 338 is the master limitation on the whole chapter, and arguably the single most important provision for understanding town planning in the NDMC area. It declares: “No improvement scheme or rehousing scheme framed under this Chapter shall be valid unless such scheme is in conformity with the provisions of the master plan for Delhi or a zonal development plan for New Delhi or any part thereof.”
The architecture is hierarchical. The Master Plan and zonal development plans are prepared under the Delhi Development Act, 1957, by the Delhi Development Authority; they are the apex land-use instruments for the capital. The NDMC's improvement power is subordinate to that apex: the Council may reconstruct an area, but only in a manner the Master Plan permits. A scheme that re-zones land use, that places construction on land the plan reserves as open space, or that otherwise departs from the plan is not merely irregular — it is, by the express words of s. 338, invalid. The conformity requirement reaches both the improvement scheme and the re-housing scheme, so accommodation built for the displaced cannot itself violate the plan.
The Supreme Court has treated such conformity clauses as mandatory and jurisdictional. In K. Ramadas Shenoy v. Chief Officers, Town Municipal Council, Udipi, AIR 1974 SC 2177, the Court quashed a municipal resolution that sanctioned a use contrary to the town-planning scheme, holding that an authority cannot sanction what the scheme forbids and that a resident of the locality has standing to enforce the plan. In Bangalore Medical Trust v. B.S. Muddappa, AIR 1991 SC 1902, the conversion of a site reserved for a public park into a private hospital was struck down precisely because it defeated the scheme's allocation. Section 338 codifies that judicial instinct for the NDMC: the plan binds the planner.
The building-control regime that town planning rides on
Improvement schemes are the macro tool; day-to-day town planning in the NDMC area runs through Chapter XIV's building-control regime (ss. 235–260), and the two interlock. Section 237 lays down the cardinal prohibition: no person shall erect or commence to erect any building, or execute any work, except with the sanction of the Chairperson and otherwise than in accordance with the provisions of the chapter and the bye-laws. Section 241 then governs the grant or refusal of sanction — the Chairperson must sanction unless the work would violate the bye-laws, encroach on land not the applicant's, be without proper street access, or rest on disputed title.
Section 242 supplies the deemed-sanction safeguard: if the Chairperson does not communicate a decision within sixty days (or thirty days for certain works), the applicant is free to proceed, though work must begin within the period the section specifies or fresh sanction is required. Crucially, deemed sanction is sanction in accordance with the bye-laws and the plan — silence cannot legalise a deviation that the law forbids. This is the bridge back to town planning: a building, even if “deemed sanctioned”, that contravenes the Master Plan's land use stands on no firmer footing than one expressly refused, because s. 338 and the Delhi Development Act constrain what may be sanctioned at all. The enforcement and appellate machinery for these controls is examined next.
Demolition, stoppage and sealing: the enforcement edge
Where construction proceeds without or contrary to sanction, the Chairperson's enforcement powers engage. Section 247 empowers an order of demolition and stoppage: where a building or work has been commenced, is being carried on, or has been completed without or contrary to the s. 241 sanction, or in contravention of any condition or any provision of the Act or bye-laws, the Chairperson may order demolition by the person responsible within a period of not less than five and not more than fifteen days. The first proviso requires a show-cause notice and a reasonable opportunity to be heard before any demolition order; the second proviso lets the Chairperson order work stopped pending appeal.
Section 250 adds the power to seal unauthorised constructions, exercisable at any time, including to give effect to an order of the Appellate Tribunal or the Administrator. Section 258 deals separately with the removal of dangerous buildings, and s. 259 with ordering a building to be vacated. The Supreme Court has consistently backed firm enforcement against unauthorised construction. In Friends Colony Development Committee v. State of Orissa, (2004) 8 SCC 733, the Court held that deviation from a sanctioned plan is not to be lightly condoned and that compounding and regularisation must be the rare exception, not the rule, because illegal construction undermines planned development and the rights of neighbours. In Esha Ekta Apartments Co-operative Housing Society Ltd. v. Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, (2013) 5 SCC 357 — the “Campa Cola” case — the Court ordered demolition of floors raised in violation of the sanctioned plan, holding that occupiers who knowingly take possession of unauthorised construction cannot resist enforcement on equitable grounds.
The Appellate Tribunal and the bar on civil courts
Enforcement under Chapter XIV is balanced by a dedicated appellate structure. Section 253 requires the Central Government, by notification, to constitute one or more Appellate Tribunals with headquarters at Delhi or New Delhi, each consisting of one person appointed by the Central Government, to decide appeals under the chapter. Section 254 lists the orders and notices against which an aggrieved person may appeal to the Tribunal, and s. 255 governs the Tribunal's procedure, including its power to stay enforcement of a demolition order on terms. An appeal against a demolition order under s. 247 must be preferred within the period the demolition order itself specifies (s. 247(2)).
Section 256 provides a further appeal against the Tribunal's orders to the Administrator, and — importantly for practice — s. 257 bars the jurisdiction of civil courts in respect of matters the Act commits to the Chairperson, the Tribunal or the Administrator. The statutory remedy is intended to be exhaustive: a litigant cannot bypass the Tribunal by suing in the civil court, nor (ordinarily) invoke the writ jurisdiction where an efficacious statutory appeal lies. This ouster, combined with the strict approach in Friends Colony and Esha Ekta, channels building-control disputes into a specialised forum and discourages the collateral litigation that once allowed unauthorised construction to outlast its illegality.
Open spaces and the public-trust thread
Because s. 335(1)(i) lets a scheme provide open spaces and s. 335(2) protects land “required to be kept as an open space”, the rich Supreme Court jurisprudence on reserved open spaces bears directly on the NDMC's improvement power. The governing principle is that land reserved or dedicated for a park, playground or open space is held in something close to a public trust and cannot be diverted to a building purpose merely because it is administratively convenient.
In Bangalore Medical Trust v. B.S. Muddappa, AIR 1991 SC 1902, the diversion of a park site to a private hospital was annulled; the Court stressed that open spaces are a constitutional necessity for the quality of urban life. In Dr. G.N. Khajuria v. Delhi Development Authority, (1995) 5 SCC 762, the allotment of park land in a residential colony for a nursery school was quashed as a misuse of power, the Court adding that construction already raised on the land was irrelevant to the legality of the allotment. In Virender Gaur v. State of Haryana, (1995) 2 SCC 577, the leasing of municipally reserved open land for a building was held contrary to law, the Court linking the preservation of open space to the right to life under Article 21. And in Pt. Chet Ram Vashist v. Municipal Corporation of Delhi, (1995) 1 SCC 47, the Court held that an authority cannot compel free transfer of reserved open space in a private layout; at most it acquires a custodial right to manage the space in the public interest. Read together, these decisions discipline how an NDMC improvement scheme may treat open space: it may reserve it, but it may not extinguish or commercialise it.
Master-Plan supremacy in practice: the sealing litigation
The clearest modern illustration of s. 338's logic — that the plan binds the authority — is the long-running Delhi sealing litigation. In M.C. Mehta v. Union of India, (2006) 3 SCC 399, the Supreme Court upheld the power of the municipal authorities to seal premises in residential areas being misused for commercial purposes contrary to the Master Plan, and constituted a Monitoring Committee to oversee enforcement. The Court treated the Master Plan's land-use allocation as binding law, not a guideline that traders or authorities could renegotiate at will, and was openly critical of attempts to amend the plan to defeat its orders.
The principle translates directly to the NDMC's improvement power. If commercial misuse of residentially zoned premises can be enforced against under the Master Plan, then a fortiori an improvement scheme — which re-arranges an entire area — cannot itself depart from that plan, exactly as s. 338 commands. The sealing litigation also illustrates the institutional hierarchy: land use is set by the Delhi Development Authority through the Master Plan under the Delhi Development Act, 1957; the NDMC and other local bodies operate within, and are bound by, that framework. For aspirants, the synthesis is that town planning in the capital is a layered system — statutory plan at the apex, local schemes and building control below — in which the lower instrument is valid only so far as it conforms to the higher. The Council's revenue side of this same governance structure is examined in the property tax notes.
How the NDMC scheme compares to the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act
For judiciary and CLAT-PG candidates, the NDMC improvement regime is best understood alongside the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, 1957, which governs the rest of Delhi. Both statutes grant area-improvement and building-control powers, and both subordinate local action to the Master Plan prepared under the Delhi Development Act, 1957. The NDMC Act's distinctive feature is the heightened role of the Central Government — sanction of improvement schemes under s. 336(2), general superintendence over building under s. 235, constitution of the Appellate Tribunal under s. 253 — reflecting that the New Delhi area is the seat of the Union government and is administered with closer central control than the rest of the capital.
The case law, however, is largely interchangeable. The open-space decisions (Bangalore Medical Trust, Khajuria, Chet Ram Vashist, Virender Gaur), the unauthorised-construction decisions (Friends Colony, Esha Ekta) and the master-plan-supremacy line (K. Ramadas Shenoy, M.C. Mehta) state principles of general town-planning law that apply whichever municipal statute is in play. A candidate who can map a given fact pattern — diversion of reserved land, deviation from a sanctioned plan, misuse of zoned premises — onto the correct principle, and then locate the NDMC provision (s. 335, s. 247, or s. 338) that the principle engages, has mastered this chapter. To place these powers in the Act's overall design, revisit the NDMC Act hub and the constitution and powers notes.
Frequently asked questions
What is an improvement scheme under the NDMC Act, 1994?
It is an area-wide reconstruction instrument under Chapter XIX (ss. 334–338). Under s. 334 the Chairperson may frame one where, on information in his possession, he is satisfied that buildings in an area are unfit or dangerous to health and that re-arrangement and reconstruction through a scheme is the most satisfactory remedy. Section 335 lists what it may provide for — acquisition, relaying out, redistribution, demolition, construction, streets, utilities, open spaces and re-housing.
Does an improvement scheme need Central Government sanction?
Yes, and it is a condition of validity. Section 336(1) requires the Chairperson to submit the scheme to the Council, which may approve it (with or without modifications) or reject it with directions for a fresh scheme. Section 336(2) then provides that no scheme approved by the Council is valid unless sanctioned by the Central Government. An unsanctioned scheme is a nullity, and any acquisition or demolition under it is without authority of law.
How does the Master Plan limit the Council's improvement power?
Section 338 makes Master-Plan conformity mandatory: no improvement or re-housing scheme is valid unless it conforms to the Master Plan for Delhi or a zonal development plan prepared under the Delhi Development Act, 1957. The plan sits at the apex; the Council's scheme is subordinate. Courts treat such conformity clauses as jurisdictional — see K. Ramadas Shenoy v. Chief Officers, TMC Udipi, AIR 1974 SC 2177, and Bangalore Medical Trust v. B.S. Muddappa, AIR 1991 SC 1902.
What happens if land reserved in a scheme is never acquired?
Section 335(2)–(3) prevents indefinite planning blight. If land designated for acquisition, or required to be kept as open space, is not acquired within ten years of Central sanction, the owner may serve a notice requiring acquisition; if the Chairperson then fails to acquire within six months, the scheme thereafter takes effect as if the land had never been so designated. The designation lapses and the owner is freed from the freeze.
Can land reserved as a park or open space be used for a building?
Generally no. Reserved open space is treated as held for the public and cannot be diverted to construction merely for convenience. In Bangalore Medical Trust v. B.S. Muddappa a park site allotted to a private hospital was struck down; in Dr. G.N. Khajuria v. DDA, (1995) 5 SCC 762, park land allotted for a nursery school was quashed; and in Pt. Chet Ram Vashist v. MCD, (1995) 1 SCC 47, the authority was held to acquire only a custodial right over layout open space, not free ownership.
What enforcement powers exist against unauthorised construction in the NDMC area?
Section 247 lets the Chairperson order demolition and stoppage of work done without or contrary to sanction, after a show-cause notice; s. 250 permits sealing of unauthorised constructions; s. 258 covers dangerous buildings. Appeals lie to an Appellate Tribunal under ss. 253–255 and then to the Administrator under s. 256, while s. 257 bars civil-court jurisdiction. The Supreme Court endorsed strict enforcement in Friends Colony Development Committee v. State of Orissa, (2004) 8 SCC 733, and ordered demolition in Esha Ekta Apartments v. MCGM, (2013) 5 SCC 357.