When Swayamprabha and family gave up 3 cents of land, thus losing a part of their home at Akkulam, for highway development, little did they know that their woes were only about to begin. The application she submitted for new building number following the reconstruction was rejected, citing the fact that the balcony railing was protruding a few centimetres outside, as compared to the plan. For the past one year, the family has been constantly visiting the Corporation to get it cleared, but to no avail.
Krishnan Nair from Kalady had a similar problem. He submitted application for construction of one more floor to his house, when officials found that the original house constructed by his father 52 years ago, had a few violations.
Missing files
In the case of Mohandas from Vattiyurkavu, the files for the renovation of his petrol pump has been “missing” at the Corporation office for months. All of them turned up at the city Corporation office early on Monday, to raise their grievances in the first-ever town planning adalat to consider and give approval to long-pending applications for building permit and TC number allocation.
Minister for Local Self Governments K.T. Jaleel sat along with Mayor V.K. Prasanth and other officials till night, to dispose of the 302 applications received.
A majority of the complaints were regarding constructions in wetland and greenzones. LSGD
Principal Secretary T.K. Jose instructed officials to take immediate steps on applications on paddy fields which were converted before 2008.
In such cases, a meeting of the zonal inspection committee will be convened to complete the procedures within two weeks.
For files which need clearance from the Town Planning department, the Corporation Engineer will have to ensure that they reach the Regional Town Planner at the earliest.
According to Corporation officials, not all applications are cleared. Immediate steps to issue building permits will be taken only on those cases where there are no violations, but have had undue delays.
When reports last came in, out of the 250 files taken up, 140 were settled.
