Parliament enacted the National Capital Region Planning Board Act in 1985 to plan the Delhi region across the boundaries of Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. The Board prepares statutory Regional Plans - for 2001, 2021 and 2041 - which participating states are bound to implement, and designates metro centres, regional centres and growth corridors intended to divert growth away from Delhi. Under section 8(f) it may also designate "counter-magnet areas" well outside the region: the Regional Plan 2001 named Hisar, Bareilly, Kota, Patiala and Gwalior, revised in the Regional Plan 2021 to Ambala, Bareilly, Dehradun, Hisar and Kanpur. The Board also lends to state and municipal infrastructure projects within the region.
The NCRPB is India's only statutory interstate regional planning authority and the country's most sustained attempt at polycentric metropolitan planning. Its record - Gurugram, Noida and Ghaziabad grew as speculative suburbs rather than as the planned counter-magnets - has become the standard Indian case study in the limits of regional plans that control neither land nor revenue.
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