The Delhi Development Authority was created in 1957 under the Delhi Development Act to plan and develop the capital, producing the first statutory Master Plan for Delhi in 1962. It acquired and held large land reserves, pursued a policy of public land assembly and disposal, and built planned residential colonies across the city. The model of a powerful parastatal development authority was widely emulated in other Indian states.
It institutionalised master-planning and public land monopoly as the dominant mode of governing Indian metropolitan growth.
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