PUDA building rules all set for revision

Kuldip Bhatia

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Ludhiana, September 12

The Housing and Urban Development Department has set the process in motion for revision of building rules. The draft of the proposed rules, The Punjab Urban Planning and Development Authority Building Rules 2017, which has been circulated among the stakeholders for their comments and objections, would replace the existing PUDA Rules 2013.

When enacted and notified, the revised PUDA Building Rules would be applicable to the whole state except within municipal limits of towns and cities, “lal lakir” of village abadi, cantonment board and the sites under the jurisdiction of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).

According to officials of the Housing and Urban Development Department, several new definitions of buildings such as miniplexes, rental housing and studio apartments, have been added while provision of rainwater harvesting as well as solar panels have been made compulsory.

The submission of building plans would have to be made in DVD/compact disc as soft copy along with the hard copies and a scrutiny fee of Rs 30 and Rs 60 per square metre of covered area in case of residential and commercial properties, respectively, will be levied. The applicants would be advised to submit the soft and hard copies of the plans on the online portal and the competent authority should convey sanctions or objections through online portal.

The builders would be required to appoint an architect/engineer for drawing of building plans and supervision of building plans and in case of violation it will be his responsibility to convey to the competent authority about the violation in the building plans and in case of any wrong information given by him, his licence would be liable to be cancelled. The self-certification of building plans has been allowed with detailed procedure laid down in the new rules.

At the same time, completion certificate and partial completion certificate along with occupation certificate procedures have been strengthened and clearly laid down to reduce violations of building bylaws.

The officials said in the residential plotted category, the minimum width of the road has been increased from 35 feet to 40 feet and the minimum size of plot has been pegged at 60 square metre other than those of affordable and EWS housing. The FSI has been increased and maximum1:2 FSI has been allowed to all plot categories. The parking norms have also been defined in the residential plotted category.

In the revised rules, a new category of studio apartments has been defined with  minimum area requirement of 2000 square metre with maximum ground coverage of 35 per cent and minimum approach road of 60 feet. The ground coverage in case of group housing has been increased from 30 to 35 per cent and unlimited FSI in case of approach road of more than 100 feet. Similarly, FSI in case of commercial complexes and malls  has also been made unlimited in case of approach road as more than 100 feet.

A new category of buildings, rental housing, has been created to check the menace of paying guest facility running in cities and separate norms have been defined for such buildings.  As a step towards conservation of environment planting of trees has been made mandatory in all class of houses.