Cuttack: The municipal corporation is weighing up legal options to charge fees to issue no-objection certificates for building plan approvals from the development authority.

The civic body issues the certificates for construction of any building to ensure that the Cuttack Development Authority approves the plans that incorporate civic facilities such as drainage and sewerage and ensure that city planning does not suffer without those.

A civic official said the municipal council had approved charging fees for issuing certificates in 2016. It was then decided that the fee would be charged at the rate of one per cent of the cost of the project for peripheral developments (building infrastructure around the construction).

But two years on, the civic body is yet to start collecting the fees.

Municipal commissioner Bikash Ranjan Mohapatra told The Telegraph on Sunday that the pros and cons of charging the fees were being weighed.

Sources said the fee proposal was pushed through after taking cue from the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation. Mohapatra, however, said: "The applicability aspect of imposing the fee is being looked into taking into consideration the Odisha Development Authorities Act to keep away from legal complications."

The civic administration is concerned that buildings were coming up in large number in different parts of the civic area without incorporating basic civic facilities, and city planning was suffering as a result.

Houses, while being taken up for construction, are expected to leave 15ft for road and drains. But in practice, most constructions were being taken up without following the rules with approval from the development authority or no-objections from the civic body. This resulted in drainage problems and waterlogging following rain, an official said.

"We have taken up the issue with the development authority to conduct field verifications to detect cases where constructions had come up without plan approvals and those where applications for plan approval had been sought without getting the no-objection certificate," a senior civic official said.

Telenga Bazar resident Pradip Sahoo said: "The situation warrants joint efforts by the development authority and the civic body. Unless field verification is strengthened, unplanned constructions will continue in newer areas and create drainage problems."