A multistoreyed building under construction in Guwahati. Picture by Biju Boro

April 6: The real estate developers in the city have threatened to move court over the delay in clearance of building proposals by the Guwahati Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA).

The Assam Real Estate and Infrastructure Developers Association today said its members have been advised to start their projects even if the GMDA reject their applications or grant permission within a month.

President of the builders’ association P.K. Sharma justified the move under the provisions of the GMDA Act, 1985.

He said the Act stipulated that “unless permission has been refused within a period of one month in case of the GMDA and 60 days for the Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) from the receipt of the application, it shall be presumed that permission has been granted”.

“We have advised the members affected by the delay to start construction as soon as possible and initiate legal action against the departments concerned. The association is in touch with its legal adviser Niloy Dutta,” he added.

The builders have approached Guwahati mayor Kushal Sarmah and informed him about their problems.

The GMDA chief executive officer Ashutosh Agnihotri said his officials are holding regular meetings to clear the pending proposals after he joined the organisation a month ago.

“The proposals that do not have anything objectionable were cleared immediately,” he said. The whole process, including a visit to the site of construction, was completed within a month, he added.

However, the builders expressed reservation over Clause 37A(II) of the GMDA building bylaw that restricts the space between a building and the road from exceeding “1.5 times the width of the road plus front open space subject to maximum of two times the road width”.

The builders’ association said the roads in the Assam capital have become narrower because the GMDA has not taken any step to stop people flouting the rules. “The GMDA has given sale permits for large portions of land, which is later divided into smaller plots without maintaining the mandatory 8.5-metre approach roads as stipulated in the master plan,” Sharma said.

Instead of addressing this problem, the GMDA amended the building bylaws in 1998 without inviting opinions from the end users.

“Guwahati today has very few plots of vacant land, which qualifies for group housing in accordance with the stringent norms. The increasing pressure on land and the need to house millions of citizens is far too acute to afford the luxury of wasting the scarce vacant plots on individual houses. Land must be shared for group housing which significantly reduces the cost of burden on the middle-class families,” he said.