The Online Building Permission System (OBPS) that went online in June 2018 has received over 150 building proposals in these past two months. These proposals range from commercial and residential buildings to educational and health institutions. Further, proposals have come in from people who intend to erect/re-erect/make alteration in a building or part or intend to subdivide or transfer any plot of land.
Officials at the Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) informed G Plus that the first proposal received online dates back to June 6, 2018. While the works of making the entire process online had been going on for over a year, it only went online in June. All the forms and proposals are currently being processed and work is moving at a fast pace.
Earlier, in a major move to make building construction clearance hassle-free in Guwahati city, chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal directed the Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) to act as the single window agency overriding the multiple agency system. He also directed the Guwahati Development Department (GDD) to make necessary modifications in the existing system so that applicants could obtain permission by applying at GMC itself.
Sarbananda Sonowal, while reviewing the implementation of various government schemes and programmes under the GDD in July 2018, said that due to involvement of multiple agencies in the issue of building construction permission, the citizens have to face lots of difficulties as well as lose valuable time.
Considering this, he directed the GDD minister to introduce a new system for online receipt of application, fee etc at GMC and develop it as the single window agency for issue of building construction permission. OBPS is expected to be officially inaugurated sometime in the coming month.
The detailed and systematic online process
The current building permission is completely online – the Guwahati Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) submits online file with planning permit after the approval of the CEO of GMDA to the counter clerk of GMC. The counter clerk of GMC, after receiving the file in his/her console, generates the file number of GMC for the file after checking the attached documents and verifying the ward number. After that, he/she submits the file to the concerned zonal engineer’s console.
The concerned zonal engineers, after receiving the file in their console, undertake site visit for the concerned file and updates the site visit detailed check list report with their observations. He/she also checks all the attached documents such as deed, land documents, etc and then performs auto scrutiny of the drawing file and comes up with a detailed report regarding all the observations.
After that, zonal engineers update the note sheet with their observations found during site visit, document verification and auto scrutiny and finally sends the file to the concerned associate planner for further processing of the file.
The associate planner, after receiving the file in their console checks the note sheet of the concerned file. Associate planner then examines the zonal engineer’s report, documents and auto scrutiny reports and recommends either for approval, rejection or objections to the additional commissioner.
The additional commissioner, after receiving the file in his/her console, checks the note sheet of the concerned file and submits it to the commissioner for approval or rejection.
The commissioner checks the note sheet of the concerned file for the comments put up by the respective zonal engineer, associate planner as well as additional commissioner. After that, the commissioner decides whether to return the file to the concerned associate planner for any clarifications or to approve the file and send the file to the concerned zonal engineer’s console for further processing of the file.
In every step and in every process, SMS notifications are sent to the applicants as well as to the concerned architects or engineers informing the status of the proposal. The whole procedure usually takes 45 days for issuing ‘No Objection Certificate’ for building permission. It may extend if any objections arise.
Engineers relieved with the introduction of OBPS
With the introduction of online auto-scrutiny, Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC)’s Online Building Permission System is one step ahead of the existing online systems. While most online systems have personnel carrying out the scrutiny manually from back-end and then updating the same online, GMC has devised the system such that all scrutiny work is done online automatically.
“Online system has helped decrease our workload tremendously. Our department is very thankful to the higher officials for coming up with such a dynamic system,” a GMC engineer expressed his happiness while speaking to G Plus.
Town Planner of Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC), Deepak Bezbaruah, informed G Plus that the GMC is currently facing a crunch of engineers. While there’s a need for around 30 engineers, there are only seven engineers present right now. He further added that, “The online system should have been put in place in the beginning itself. Although it took a while, we’re happy that the system is finally active and we have been receiving positive response from all stakeholders.”