In Chennai, Smoother Building Approvals Leave No Space for Graft

Presently, Greater Chennai Corporation has been closely collaborating with the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority to simplify the process of approving buildings. The respective authorities are making efforts to transform the entire procedure online. The civic body has enforced norms to ensure that all the online documents remain under the same name, and carry the same phone number, which should be of the owner of the property. In the past, only the phone number of the license surveyor was given in the documents. The updates on various stages during the approval process used to come to them. This created a nexus between the corporation officials and the license surveyors. As a result, the approval process came under problems. Besides, the senior officials and the vigilance department of the civic body were unable to verify with the owners whether they encountered problems in obtaining approvals.

One of the senior corporation officials in the works department stated that the authorities have taken several measures in the last one month. The mechanism has been made fully online, so that there would be no contact with the officials of the department. In order to help property owners collect the building document in the form of hard copies, the authorities have also set up separate counters in the zonal offices as well as the Amma Maligai building. In order to provide approvals, all the officials in every zone have received a deadline of 30 days. To prevent delays, the authorities are reviewing the system once every 15 days.

In the past, approvals were kept in the pending list at different zones for long, including the main building. Presently, the property owners can obtain approvals within 30 days, so that no approval would be pending. The corporation commissioner has stated that the contact number of the surveyor is stated in the building plan application approval documents. In the online database and the concerned application, the contact details of the property owner are not given. This was causing difficulties during the verification process with the actual owners of the properties. With the online system coming in, this will prevent glitches in the coming months, streamlining the process significantly.