The State government is initiating steps to establish a single window for issuing planning permission for residential and commercial building projects in line with the policies of the Centre.
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation has been trying to establish this system across the country for over three years. The recently passed Real Estate Authority Act also makes it mandatory for developers to obtain all the necessary clearances from the various Central and State government departments before advertising their projects or collecting money from potential customers.
“The Centre is now very keen on ensuring ‘ease of doing business’ and is particular that interaction between applicants and officials in the different government agencies at multiple levels is brought down,” sources in the Department told The Hindu.
The State government has also roped in the Indian Institute of Technology–Madras for developing the single window portal as a part of this.
While the proposal for creating such a system has to come from the two principal planning agencies in the State – Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority in the city and suburbs, and the Directorate of Town and Country Planning in the rest of Tamil Nadu – it is unlikely that their report will be prepared anytime soon as the top posts – Member Secretary in CMDA and Director in DTCP — are vacant and held in charge by the Secretary, Department of Housing, sources said.
The building industry has been demanding that the time taken for sanctioning panning permissions and the subsequent completion certificates be reduced and the Centre too has been thinking on similar lines to bring down the national average time taken for issuing planning permission from nearly 200 days to less than 50.
Officials in the State government said that the AIADMK had announced in its election manifesto that it would building approvals are given in 45 days.
Further, speeding up of the process would comply with the provisions of the Centre's Housing for All Scheme.
