There is no place like home, goes the adage. But, those in the know say the roads to buying can be treacherous. To address the issue of unauthorised construction and to curb the menace, the city corporation has made the sanctions accorded to project plans available online.
This gives buyers a fool-proof method to check if their prospective purchase has all legal permissions. Anyone who wants to know of the propriety of a construction can now log on to the Greater Chennai Corporation’s website and find planning permits issued to new buildings and those in existence from 2014. The online list has close to 1,500 approved plans with details including name, address of the applicant and the site, and permit numbers. This measure was announced during the 2014-15 civic budget by mayor Saidai Duraisamy.
Only after a planning and building permit is issued by the corporation or the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA), can any construction legally begin. However, there is still no facility where the public can check for building violations. Though the mayor announced in the previous budget that a copy of the sanctioned building plan would be issued to neighbours (on either side and rear), it has not been done. This was model was introduced by the Hyderabad Municipal Corporation so that people from adjacent properties could alert the corporation if they observed any deviations from plan.
Corporation officials say that they will not publicise buildings plans online as it involved privacy issues. “Neighbours can misuse copies of sanctioned designs and there are security concerns too,” said a senior corporation official. “Disagreeing neighbours use this to file complaints in courts and they get the construction stayed. Our resources are already stretched. The enforcement cell of the corporation assigned to check building rule violations are behind court cases every day.” The cell has only three officers one each from central, south, and north regions.
“Even if copies are not given to people in adjacent buildings, investors must see that they ask for a copy before finalising the agreement,” said Rohini Balasundaram, a resident of Adyar, looking for a villa-style home on OMR.
That there are no regular checks and monitoring is a long-standing complaint. V S Jayaraman, a city resident, says he had complained of three building violations in T Nagar to the CMDA and corporation but no action had been taken. “Publicising sanctions will not have any effect, unless officials do periodic checks to ensure that the final outcome of the building matches with the nature of approval issued,” he says.
The Madras high court had recently pulled up various local bodies after residents reported violations. Next week, the corporation and the CMDA will submit a joint report via a court-appointed mediator on their plans to regularise buildings in George Town where most number of violations had been reported. “90% of buildings in George Town have violations,” a senior corporation officer said. “Most of them are setback space (distance from street, adjacent building, wall) violations which are deemed ‘violation’ in Tamil Nadu alone.”
Source: The Times of India, Chennai