Municipal Corporation of Delhi has debarred 140 architects from approving buildings plans and has said that details of 20% of the plans will be checked after complaints that its empanelled architects had sanctioned plans with wrong information, officials said.
The MCD has around 1,300 empanelled architects.
“Our senior officials are randomly verifying the building plans/documents to ensure that the ownership is right and documents are not related to plots in unauthorised colonies. So far, the department has debarred 140 architects for three years and revoked their sanctioned plans for submitting wrong information or other reasons,” an official said.
“The move has been taken in the wake of increasing complaints regarding architects violating building norms while approving/submitting building plans. Also, the MCD doesn’t approve building plans in unauthorised colonies. For repeat violators, we are mulling options for getting police complaints registered,” the official said.
Under the MCD, permits for constructing residential buildings up to 500 sqm don’t need physical verification from the corporation, apart from approval from registered or empanelled architects.
An online portal for such transactions was launched a few years back as a measure to improve the “ease of doing business”.
Officials claimed that the MCD was not responsible for checking the quality of construction material of individual houses. “But we do carry out a survey of dangerous buildings before the monsoon and our staff verify the condition of buildings from the outside, submit a report and issue notices accordingly,” the official said.
To further identify latitude and longitude of the planned properties and check land use, the MCD has launched an app recently which will help in geo-tagging properties.
“Geo-tagging of properties by taxpayers will provide a location-wise identification of individual properties. This will also help in verifying land use according to the permissible plan. The application also includes assigning a unique latitude and longitude to a property on a GIS map by selecting the current location,” an MCD official said.