The online system for building plan approvals has delayed the sanction of a number of housing projects across Navi Mumbai, Mumbai, Thane and the state.
The architects body, Indian Institute of Architects (IIA)-Navi Mumbai Centre, had last week once again reminded the additional chief secretary-urban development for redressal of the issues.
Architects have expressed concern over approval delays, lacking hierarchical coordination, software glitches etc in the BPMS (Building Plan Management System) and COPAS (Cidco’s Online Plan Approval System) systems which have gone against their very purpose of development and implementation.
Currently, Cidco developed online building plan ‘COPAS’ which was launched in 2015 and state IT department’s BPMS which was launched in 2017 are used.
The state has extended the offline regional plan submission till June 30, 2023, but many alleged offline system encourages corruption.
NMMC in December 2022 had facilitated a presentation session involving architects and the Maha IT cell staffers, with no yield.
The IIA claims the problem keep cropping up in the system resulting in delays for example if a revision of a drawing if uploaded on the same day, it shows that it has been rejected/informed, among other issues encountered on the website.
IIA chairperson, Kaushal Jadia complained, “We are facing 100% delays in all building plan approvals Architects across the state are facing trouble because of issues in the online system.”
Jadia, and joint secretary Sheetal Nemane of Navi Mumbai centre had on December 29, 2022, written a letter to the UD principal secretary, to Bhushan Gagrani, seeking a solution. And on June 13 Jadia had also written a reminder to Gagrani about the same.
Text messages sent to Bhushan Gagarani did not elicit any response till the time of going to the press.