Online approval of buildings proves a non-starter

Ludhiana: The approval of building plans online is failing to generate enough response from city residents, as despite several efforts, only 53 applications came up, out of which 11 have been approved so far. Civic officials have stopped accepting manual applications for residential buildings, but due to some complexity in the online system, even architects are unable to submit the plans online. However, not all town planning schemes are uploaded on the system, due to which people living in the scheme areas cannot apply online for the approvals.
This online building plan scheme was launched on August 16 last year by local bodies minister Navjot Sidhu, and it was also among the much-hyped projects announced by Sidhu. From August 16 to January 15, officials continued receiving applications manually as well as online, but after January 15, they had received only 11 online applications, and stopped receiving manual applications.

More than 1,500 applications were received manually by civic officials until December last year, but only 53 had come for approval through the online system. There are 153 town planning schemes in the city, but only 68 have been uploaded on the software.

One of the civic officials claimed the system should have been a little bit simpler, as instead of putting colour coding for various things, there should have been a facility to upload building plans, and if these fulfilled the conditions, they should be cleared. He said sometimes even the software hangs, and does not accept anything. He claimed MC officials could not do anything to popularize the system, because building plans were to be uploaded only by architects.

Assistant town planner Surinder Singh Bindra said they had organized training camps for architects, so that they could understand the system, but there is some problem with the software. He said they had conveyed to the authorities in Chandigarh to resolve the problems.

LOG-IN PROBLEMS

The online applications process goes to the log-in accounts of various officers at certain levels, but the log-ins have been created in the name of the officers concerned. In the case of transfer of particular officers, others will not be able to open it and process the application. One of the officials claimed that some officer had recently been transferred, and now they were unable to process the applications. He said they should have created log-in IDs according to designation, because officers will continue to get transferred.