Thousands of proposals rejected, Pune associations write to CEO for  action, failing which they would approach CM; authority says projects wrongly passed by town planning department

The Pune Metropolitan Region Development Authority (PMRDA) has been rejecting thousands of building permissions for the past four months, keeping several construction ventures pending much to the grief of city builders. Losing out on precious projects, the city-based Pune Architectural Consultants Association (PACA), Architects, Engineers and Surveyors Association (AESA) and the Indian Institute of Architects, Pune Chaptor (IIA) have decided to protest against PMRDA's 'misinterpretation' of the bye-laws, which is delaying the sanctioning process.

"We feel this delay is because of incompetent officers failing to either interpret or implement bye-laws published and applied by the town planning department in November 2013. This is why PMRDA has refused more than a thousand approvals based on technical non-compliance. Most of these are owing to their abrupt refusal to consider clarifications issued by the town planning director," shared Mandar Ghate from PACA. Architects have alleged that the building permission proposals passed by the district collectorate in keeping with the Regional Plan Development Control and Promotion Regulations (DCPR) are also not being sanctioned by the PMRDA, which is asking developers to come up with fresh proposals.

The architectural associations stressed that it is illegal on the part of PMRDA to deny builders their due sanctions. They claimed that a government notification on March 31, 2015, had informed the PMRDA that the implementation of DCPR for projects in the PMRDA should be based on the Regional Plan DCPR published in November 2013. It was implied that till the time PMRDA creates its own Development Plan and related DCPRs, building permissions should be processed by the town planning department under the district collector as before.

Members of the PACA also claimed that for about three to four months after PMRDA's formation in April last year, this directive was being followed, building permission scrutiny was being done based on that and approvals were also being granted. However, since the last four months, several issues have cropped up all of a sudden, which are inconsistent with the way DCPRs were being implemented. "We had a number of meetings with the PMRDA chief executive officer (CEO) and chief planner. While both accepted some issues, they later refused to implement those even though the minutes of the meetings were kept officially. Such inconsistencies and abrupt changes in policy have put a lot of projects at risk as most of the designs (which have taken months to develop) will have to be changed now. This may also lead to project promoters considering that architects do not have the correct knowledge and judgement of what is permissible," Ghate rued, adding, "We feel this is unwarranted and extremely unfair. Such abrupt changes in policy are contrary to the clause."

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However, sources at PMRDA said the reason for denial of building sanctions is not any illegal act by the officers, but a result of lacunae while sanctioning the plan. "At many places, maps have been sanctioned despite there being no road marking mentioned in the development control rules," a source informed, adding that fearing villages may get merged with the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), many had sanctioned the plans from the town planning department. But, the villages did not merge and PMRDA was set up. These plans again came to the PMRDA for sanctioning, where irregularities were found.

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