Bhubaneswar: The city administration has suspended the online building plan approval system for applicants much to the disapproval of real estate developers.

On August 1 last year, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation and the Bhubaneswar Development Authority had rolled out the online building plan approval system to provide hassle free service to the people.

The plan was to streamline the service and provide approval or rejection to building plans within a month instead of the longer manual way. However, nearly nine months into the service, the authorities have now stopped it.

Sources said it had to be done since the software developed to provide the service to the people crashed because of the presence of bugs.

Infrastructure Learning and Financial Services had developed the software for the service.

A department official said the problems started in January and since then not a single application had been approved or rejected.

"There arose certain problems while scrutinising the applications through the online mode. We were forced to close the service down from April 19 because of the flaws in the software. The agency hired to execute the job has been asked to fix the problems," said a civic body official.

The municipal corporation takes care of the building plan approval system for low-risk buildings while the development authority take care of the high-risk buildings in the city.

The approval system was made online in order to not only expedite the service but also to avoid corruption in the service.

"It seems that the authorities knowingly stopped the online service for vested interests," said a city-based real estate developer.

Mayor Ananta Naryan Jena said the problems would be resolved at the earliest.

"We will fix the flaws in the software and take care of other problems in rendering the online service. We will do our best to resume the online service as soon as possible," said Jena.