Rs 1-cr daily loss for Haryana as no online approval of site plan

CHANDIGARH:The much-touted system for online approval of site plans of buildings in urban areas across Haryana, unveiled last month, has proved to be a non-starter, causing a daily loss of nearly Rs 1 crore in the form of approval fee to the state exchequer.

Sushil Manav
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, December 6

The much-touted system for online approval of site plans of buildings in urban areas across Haryana, unveiled last month, has proved to be a non-starter, causing a daily loss of nearly Rs 1 crore in the form of approval fee to the state exchequer.

The government is also losing cess for the Haryana Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board Fund, as a part of the approval fee goes towards this fund.

Not only has the new system remained non-functional since its launch 17 days ago, even the old manual system has failed to approve even a single site plan during the period.

Sources said the government had introduced the online system for approval of site plan of buildings in all 10 municipal corporations, 18 councils and 53 committees from November 19.

On an average, nearly five site plan applications are received daily in each municipal corporation, one to two in a council and 10-12 per month in a municipal committee, making it 90 to 100 applications per day in the state. While applicants could upload their applications online earlier too, they had to also submit a hard copy of the documents and the approval was granted on these copies.

With the new system coming in, the government shut down the existing website and launched a new one where the applicants were supposed to upload applications.

As the new website is inoperative, even architects who were to be registered for the new system are at sea.

Architect Ekta Kapoor, who uploaded her application on November 26 for registration as a technical person for Panipat MC, is still awaiting action on part of the authorities.

“Officials of the Urban Local Bodies Department in Panchkula informed me that architects and engineers would soon be called to Panchkula for verification of documents.

“When architects and engineers haven’t been registered and their training is pending, how can people submit applications for approval of site plans?” she said.

While architects get themselves registered online within an hour in Himachal Pradesh, those in Haryana are clueless even 10 days after filing an application, she claimed.