Soon, get nods for construction projects online

To ensure faster clearances for developmental projects and to bring about transparency, the state government will soon shift the process for construction permissions online. To be kicked off from the municipal councils in Maharashtra, including those in Mumbai's extended suburbs in Thane, Palghar and Raigad, the e-DCR project will subsequently be extended to the city's municipal corporations later this year.

Officials claim the shift from a physical system to an online one, where consent can be applied for and secured online, will reduce corruption and ensure that nods came in faster. In a soft launch, the state information technology (IT) department has already conducted a month-long pilot project in Pune and its results are being used to sort out operational bugs. The department is looking at a phased, state-wide roll out soon.

"The e-DCR project will be launched in the municipal councils as they have an almost standardised set of development control regulations (DCR)," a senior state government official, who is part of the exercise, told dna.

This module will be integrated with the state government's Aaple Sarkar portal, which is a government to citizen (G2C) and government to business (G2B) interface, with online submissions of plans being made mandatory.

The architects can log on to the portal and select the municipal council or nagar panchayat where they want to secure building permissions. The DCR of the municipal council will be fed into the system and the architect will be able to submit the drawings and compliances online and also get approvals through the same electronic route. They will be able to make downloads, changes and submissions using the Aaple Sarkar app. This will also help create an online repository of this data.

"We plan to cover all phases end-to-end up to the occupation certificate in phases," said a senior official from the state IT department. The facility will initially be rolled out in 226 municipal councils and 13 nagar parishads with plans to extend it to 26 municipal corporations later this year.

While manual interface will be reduced in the system to ensure that architects and developers will have to make fewer trips to municipal offices, necessary site visits by officials will be conducted. "In the next phase, we plan to cover municipal corporations. These municipal corporations have different DC regulations but talks are underway to cover them this year," he added, stating that this would ensure lesser corruption, lower manual interface and faster permissions.

An architect, however, pointed out that "the problem was not that of technology, but of motives". "The system is as good as the people who are there. Technology is not a magic wand (to reduce delays and corruption)," noted the architect, who has an experience of working on similar online building permission systems in other states.

The architect said it was necessary to train officials and those who were part of the approvals chain in the use of this technology to ensure that there was "back and forth" and ensure that the copyright on these drawings and plans was protected and they were not manipulated.