Obtaining building plans is no more a Herculean task. The applicants need not run from pillar to post in the corridors of Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC). They need not grease the palms of officials in the Town Planning wing either. The corporation is contemplating receiving and sanctioning plans through eSeva centres. The necessary software is being developed and the proposed services would be launched shortly.
The corporation is toying with the idea of receiving building applications through the eSeva centres following complaints that corruption is rampant in the Town Planning wing.
“Once we remove the interface between officials and applicants, the scope for corruption will come down automatically,” says Municipal Commissioner G. Ravi Babu.
Adherence to norms
Of late, it has been observed that people are making the rounds in the corridors of the corporation to get their applications sanctioned. In some cases, they want to construct houses without following norms such as setbacks. This gives scope for corruption. If the new proposal is to be implemented, the applicants would have to fill the forms and submit all documents mentioned in the appendices.
Queries, if any, would also be routed through the eSeva centres. At the end of the day, the application is either rejected or approved. The proposal would also help bring down the piling applications at the Town Planning wing, he explains.
The Town Planning wing receives, on an average, 1,200 applications per annum. Of these, 50 per cent are related to plans proposed in plots of less than 300 sq. metres size. The VMC received 106 building plans for plots of more than 300 sq. metres in 2008, 101 in 2009, and more than 155 in 2010.
Similarly, the number of plans received for plots of a size between 200 sq. metres and 300 sq. metres was 136 in 2008, 249 in 2009, and more than 245 in 2010. The corporation, in all, received 1,430 applications in 2010, 1,594 applications in 2009, and 1,147 in 2008. Till last year, there was a drastic fall in the number of applications following GO 450 that mandates the applicants to mortgage 10 per cent of built-up area for the building proposed on a plot of 100 sq metres. The number of applications is on rise in the recent past, officials say.
