If all goes well, getting building plan approvals will become a smoother affair in the next few months. The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) is developing a single digital platform for building plan approvals by which an applicant can upload the required documents on the website and need not go to each office such as BESCOM for No Objection Certificates (NOCs).
The platform will integrate all departments and the BBMP will verify and approve the plan in 45 days. The mandate to ready the system is February 15.
Anjum Perwez, Principal Secretary, Urban Development Department (UDD), Government of Karnataka, said while assessing a city’s easy of doing business, parameters such as registration, legal aspects, industrial sites, labour department issues are looked into.
“With respect to construction permits, they look into factors such as how much time it takes to complete the process, the documents that are required to be submitted to see the kind of ease we have provided to the people who ask for building permits. We had a meeting with the Secretary to Government of India, our Chief Secretary, the BBMP Commissioner and other officials where we discussed about all the processes,” Perwez said. He said that every week the Chief Secretary will hold meetings to follow up on the implementation.
“The number of documents need to be reduced and the BBMP is working on it,” he said.
The applicant then can apply for the permit at the comfort of his home. “The applicant can get NOCs from all organisations such as fire department, BESCOM on a single platform after he feeds the computer aided plan unless it’s been denied by any particular organisation. If that is the case, the applicant will be informed that the application has been rejected due to a specific reason,” he said. He said fee can be paid online too.
Three areas of reforms
The BBMP is working on procedural reforms in three areas — online building plan approval, auto trigger of mutation and simplifying the process of trade licences.
“As of now, the applicant needs to apply separately to different authorities for NOC. A common application form is being created and should be ready by January 31. The BBMP will gather all the information from the applicant through the system and provide it to the other authorities and get the report from each of them before approving the plan,” said Dr Ravikumar Surpur, Special Commissioner (Projects), BBMP.
He said, the process will also include creation of latent defect liability, which would provide insurance cover in case of any structural defects or any issues while construction. “There will also be auto trigger of mutation which means the process of changing the property from the name of the seller to the buyer will happen automatically. The special commissioner, Revenue is working on the integration of all property records with Cauvery, a registration and stamp department software,” he added.
The number of documents will also be reduced to two or three. “The applicant only has to provide two documents — ownership or lease agreement and electricity connection — for the trade licence in residential areas. For commercial or mixed area, the applicant will have to submit consent from the neighbour for select trades,” he said.
What’s in store with the new system
* A common application form is being created for all NOCs
* Latent defect liability will provide insurance cover in case of structural defects or issues during construction
* No of documents to be submitted will be reduced to 2-3
* Changing property owner name from seller to buyer is easier
