Sanctioning of building permits to go online in 13 more cities

The union ministry of urban development has asked 13 more cities with airport connectivity to enable integrated online approval of building plans during the current financial year, in order to enhance the 'ease of doing business' in the construction sector.

These 13 cities are among the 15 cities for which the Airports Authority of India has evolved colour coded zoning maps for according 'No Objection Certificates' in respect of height of construction projects. The other two cities, viz, Delhi and Mumbai have already enabled online approvals based on a common application form.

Durga Shankar Misra, additional secretary (UD) is reported to have reviewed the status of these 13 cities with municipal commissioners of most of these cities and urged them to facilitate integrated online approvals during this financial year.

Sources say that Hyderabad would be ready with online platform by the end of this month and would soon enable integration with other agencies like Airports Authority of India, National Monuments Authority etc, thereafter.

Under the Smart Raj programme of Rajasthan, online platforms for Jaipur and all other cities would be ready within two months and this would be operationalised after trials in the next two months.

Kolkata has introduced online system from April this year and integration with other agencies to enable common application form will be taken up.

Nagpur would adopt the online model introduced by the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai at the earliest.

Amritsar has already developed online system, which is under trial for operationalisation next month and integration with other agencies will be taken up soon.

Other cities being encouraged to go online are Bengaluru, Patna, Aurangabad, Chennai, Kochi, Guwahati, Ahmedabad and Lucknow.