Bhubaneswar, June 5: The city administration has taken a smart step to speed up the process of rapid urbanisation - timely approval of building plans.
Delay in approving building plans has been a major hurdle in the process of urbanisation. To address the problem, the Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) is already implementing a state government's plan to expedite the approval process. As part of the plan, which is being implemented here from June 1, a multi-agency inspection team is visiting construction sites to decide on project approval.
The inspection team comprises one official each from government agencies, including the state pollution control board, Central Electricity Utility Services and the Public Health Engineering Organisation.
The move has been implemented to end the tardy process of obtaining no-objection certificates or clearances from various agencies before one can begin construction.
"For applicants, the practice so far has been to approach several agencies for no-objection certificates. This used to result in inordinate delays in sanctioning the building plan. To overcome the delay caused by multiple inspections, we have decided to take up joint inspection of sites. The development authority will co-ordinate the efforts," said the development authority's vice-chairman Krishan Kumar.
He said the BDA would decide upon a common date and time for the inspection and intimate it to the respective agencies.
"The agencies then nominate a nodal officer and a substitute for the team. If representatives of any agency are absent during the inspection, it will be deemed that the department concerned has provided the clearance," said Kumar.
The development authority has also decided to upload the detailed inspection report on its website within 48 hours. This will enable applicants to know the status of their applications. It would also intimate them if any agency required additional documents to provide the approval.
Till the introduction of the new system, the process to get building plan approval began with the submission of an application to the development authority.
The applicant was then left to run from one agency to another to get the required clearances. The agencies included fire services, pollution control board, electricity office, civic body and the water resources department. Once these clearances were submitted to the development authority, the inspection process began. The entire process took at least 90 days, which the new system will reduce to 30 days.
"I hope the common inspection will be a boon for citizens and real-estate developers. The earlier process was tardy, which sometimes took more than a year to get completed. This time, the development authority has promised to get it done within 30 days and I think that the initiative will work well," said a city-based real-estate developer Sangram Nayak.
