Several reforms introduced in the recent years to augment efficiency, improve responsiveness, and weed out corruption in Delhi’s three municipal corporations have remained unproductive. Apart from putting various services online, one of the big-ticket initiatives undertaken was simplification and faster approval for building plans. However, due to procedural issues, lack of enforcement, and shortage of staff, it has hardly made a difference on the ground --failing to curb illegal constructions.

Statistics show that the number of approval granted by the corporations has constantly been falling since 2012-13, which means just a few people were applying for approval of their building plans. In 2011, the unified MCD launched online building plan sanction system. It approved 740 plans. Though the number crossed 8, 000 (highest so far) mark the next year but it started declining by 2013.

Following the ‘ease of doing business: construction permits’ project by the Central government, the three civic bodies stopped accepting offline requests for building plan and made the process completely online in April last year. From April 8, 2016 to March 20, 2017, the civic bodies have sanctioned 2,342 maps.

According to an estimate, only 5 to 10% of the total population in the city obtains building plans and nearly 80% of the construction is either unauthorised or doesn’t match with the approved plan.

A former senior municipal corporation official, who was closely associated with digitisation of services including online sanctioning of building plans, said until the approach is changed and proper enforcement of law is not guaranteed, the system cannot improve.

“Vested interests do not allow the reforms to take root. The 30-day rule exists on papers, when an application is submitted, they keep raising objections until one doesn’t succumb to their ‘demand’,” he said.

Citing one of the shortcomings in the procedure, he said a person, who intends to build his house, has to get plan prepared and submitted by an architect empanelled by the municipal corporations. “There is no fixed charge to avail architect services and the fee is decided by them,” the official said.

He said implementation of building by-laws in several areas of Delhi is tough given the unplanned growth of the city. “No building plan can be sanctioned in the Walled city, rural and unauthorised colonies because they just don’t fulfil basic requirements for approval. As per the provisions, there should be certain width of road or space in the area to move rescue vehicles in case of any disaster. This is one of the big issues in Old Delhi, where lanes are just three feet wide. So, a plan cannot be approved there. Rules will have to be tweaked,” he said.

In this case, the owner has to resort to unfair means and this is one lacuna in the rules, he said.

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The other area of concern is deviation from sanctioned plan or illegal construction. On occasions, it has been seen that even after approval from the corporations, people alters plans. An official of the engineering department of North Delhi Municipal Corporation said random inspection of the site is conducted to check whether the owner adheres to the approved map.