Patna Municipal Corporation chief to pass building plans now
2 min readPatna: Good news for realtors. Under the provisions of Bihar Municipal Act (BMA), 2007, rules regarding the approval of building plans have been finally notified by the state government. Now, the chief municipal officer (commissioner, Patna Municipal Corporation) will inquire, verify and after satisfaction pass the building plans.
The builders can now submit their building plans to the PMC and it will soon start issuing planning reports. PMC commissioner Kuldip Narayan told TOI, “I received letter from the state government three days back. The letter says that the chief municipal officer will now have the power to inquire, verify and after satisfaction pass the building plan.”
However, the government has not mentioned how the chief municipal officer is supposed to inquire and verify, and the parameters based on which he can say the submitted building plan is satisfactory. The commissioner added, “The process of passing building plans will take some time to kick-start as we will have to develop infrastructure and complete paper work based on the guidelines of Bihar Municipal Act (BMA), 2007.”
For quite some time, all construction work in the city, be it of private or commercial buildings, was stalled since state urban development and housing department had seized all the power of empanelled architects which automatically affected the process of passing building plans. The PMC had also stopped issuing planning reports for the plots to both developers and private land owners to stop new constructions in the city in view of the high court order.
A senior PMC official said, “At the time when high court issued the order, the list of buildings violating building bylaws was huge. The corporation was facing difficulty in identifying the buildings violating building bylaws. To avoid further confusion, the PMC commissioner stopped issuing planning reports too.”
Sometime back, the state urban development department stated that building plans will be passed by the ‘competent authority’, but it had not chosen the ‘competent authority.’
“The Bihar Municipal Act, 2007 has the provision of framing new rules and regulation following certain guidelines. The state government has how cleared the path of realtors by selecting the chief municipal officer as ‘competent authority,” said a senior official.
Courtesy: TNN
