It has been a 10-year-long wait for residents in added areas for the Coimbatore Corporation to resolve the problems in giving additional building plan approval. The residents from 40 wards continue to knock on the Corporation’s door but there is no solution yet.
The residents in Vadavalli, Thudiyalur, Kavundampalayam, Kalapatti or Kurchi cannot get plan approval from the Corporation if they have to take up additional construction, say a first floor. For, the Corporation does not treat as legit the approval they had obtained from the then local body for constructing the existing building.
This is because of the difference in the procedures and rules that existed then for giving building plan approval, says consumer activist K. Kathirmathiyon, who has taken up the issue.
As a result, the residents who want to construct an additional house or another building will not get approval and in the absence of approval, they cannot avail of bank loan. And, if the residents still go ahead and construct a building and even if that is a replica of the existing building, the Corporation considers it an illegal construction.
This problem is unique to Coimbatore Corporation as it the only local body in the State that followed an automated plan approval process using ‘auto DCR’ software, Mr. Kathirmathiyon says in his letter to the Corporation Commissioner and adds that the only way an added area resident can get plan approval for a building is by making a false claim of demolishing the existing building to suit the new rules and then get the plan approval.
That makes the existing building and new building unauthorised as no demolition is carried out.
The existing set of procedures the Corporation adopts punishes the added area residents for no fault of theirs, he argues and has sought a change in plan approval procedure.
The plan approval problem in added area became so much of an issue during the just-concluded Assembly election that political parties included it in their manifesto and promised solution.
Corporation Commissioner Raja Gopal Sunkara says the Corporation is seized of the issue. He has asked the town planning wing officials to check what is the procedure adopted in Madurai or Tiruchi corporation and with the Commissioner of Municipal Administration office so as to provide a solution at the earliest.
As an extension of this, the Corporation is also having a look at the ‘auto DCR’ software to see if it can continue with it or use the software the other municipal corporations use.
