Patna, July 15: Builders in the city merrily defy Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) rules to display project information at apartment construction sites, while authorities responsible for enforcing the regulation plead helplessness.

The urban planning department of PMC, which empowered to take action against defaulters, claim they cannot take action as they are suffering from a severe crunch of employees.

Sources said according to the modified building bylaws of the Bihar Municipal Act, the builders are supposed to provide details like case plan number of the project, name and contact details of the builder, total numbers of flats and floors in the under-construction building and the name of the architect who has approved the plan on a display board at the construction site. However, while about 80 per cent builders provide no information at all, the rest only display whether the plan is approved by PMC.

“These irregularities are in gross violation of the existing norms. People in the neighbourhood need to have knowledge of the projects coming up in the area so that they can get the violations cross-checked by a competent authorities in the corporation. Not many builders take these norms seriously, and most of them defy these rules,” said a source in the civic body.

Most of the builders, meanwhile said that they were not even aware of any such rule.

“I saw the notice claiming that a step is mandatory in newspapers recently. Even PMC officials, who come to visit our construction sites, never told me about such norms. However, I feel it will be good for the public, if all builders adhere to the guideline and display the information. I know that builders rarely do it at present,” said Om Prakash Sinha, the owner of Shanti Constructions.

Senior officials in the urban planning section of the civic body said that they were aware of the violations but were “helpless”.

Vijay Kumar, director, urban planning department, PMC told The Telegraph: “I know builders do not adhere to the rules and do not provide the required information at construction sites. We have been reminding them of the existing norms through notices in the newspapers but it is very difficult to bring the defaulters to book individually as there is an acute shortage of manpower in the department.”

He added that while sanctioned strength of junior engineers in the department is 108, there are only nine junior engineers at present.

“Similarly, while there are 34 posts of assistant engineers, we have to make do with five. Sanctioned number of executive engineers is eight while there are only two in the department at present. You can understand the pressure on us in such a situation,” said Vijay.

He added that PMC had identified 413 buildings that had been constructed in violation of the approved building maps.

“About 60 per cent of these constructions are apartments. However, we have been unable to take any action as we are suffering from acute manpower shortage. Thus the work of vigilance squads has been extremely slow,” said Vijay.