The Telangana State government has issued orders cutting down the time limit for issue of building permissions by the urban local bodies, from 30 days to 21 days. It has also fixed separate deadlines for various processes and penalties on the staff, for each day of delay.
If permission is not given within 21 days, it would be deemed to have been given, the orders issued by the Principal Secretary, Municipal Administration and Urban Development (MAUD), Arvind Kumar, said. However, applicants may not construe the deemed sanction as authorisation to violate laws and regulations.
The orders have been issued in view of the enormous time being taken by officials in inspection and verification, despite the introduction of online approval system in all the urban local bodies. Inspection or scrutiny officers were taking a lot of time, and shortfall of documents was being intimated to the applicants just 2-3 days before the expiry of the 30-day time limit prescribed by the government. Land sections of GHMC and HMDA are not adhering to any time limit for giving remarks on title aspects, and in some cases, the licensed technical personnel are not submitting the plans as per norms, leading to rejection and resubmission of applications, the orders mentioned. In order to address the aforementioned issues, a time limit of 10 days has been prescribed for seeking information on documents or additional information from the applicants. No inspection of the site will be required if it is located within approved or regularised layout, the orders said. Verification of ownership documents should be completed within seven days.
If the time limits are not followed, penalty of ₹1000 per day will be levied on the staff concerned, Mr. Arvind Kumar warned. Licence of the licensed architects, engineers, surveyors will be cancelled and their names blacklisted, if they submit wrong plans or give faulty information more than three times.
