Instead of encouraging people to get their building plans approved legally, the municipal corporation takes the lazier option of handing them challans and even these are not recovered.
This careless attitude of the municipal corporation’s building branch was exposed when an RTI (Right to Information) actvist asked it about the total approved building plans and challans in close to two years.
After a year and only when the applicant moved the Punjab state information commission, officials from only zone A cared to reply, that from January 2019 to July 2021, it had cleared only 69 building plans but penalised 2,890 violators.
In July 2021, RTI activist Rohit Sabharwal had sought information about total commercial, industrial, and residential building plans approved and all challans issued for violations. He had asked the MC about the total number of buildings completed with non-compoundable violation between January 2019 and July 2021 for all four zones.
Replying to the query, the officials responsible for zone A shared with him that six building plans were approved for commercial construction, seven for industrial purpose, and 56 for residential purpose, but the number of challans for building bylaws violations in comparison was 2,890. They said they had not maintained any record of the buildings completed with non-compoundable violations.
Sabharwal said: “First I had to knock at the door of the information commission, as the MC officials wouldn’t part with the details, and even then only zone A team sent met the details, while the other zones didn’t care. Zone A covers the old areas of rebuilt structures, raised over the old demolished construction, and yet only a few building plans came up for approval. Officials should ask people to get their building plans approved so that violation could be controlled, but they don’t follow the norms.”
Confronted, one of the MC officials said on the condition of anonymity that the information was supplied zone-wise and they hardly had enought staff to send into the field for encouraging the public to go for building plan approval.
The building branch has remained in controversy. A survey conducted under additional commissioner Rishipal Singh had marked at least 50,000 buildings that were missing from the MC records. The civic body had also launched a ‘saral’ scheme of easy building plan approval and this had increased compliance but the number dipped again, even thought the system is now online and quicker.
