JOIN USAs the February 1 deadline approaches to bring all building plan sanction online, a requirement for release of Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM) funds for Bangalore, corporators led by Gangabyraiah of Dr Rajkumar Ward and Shanthakumari of Mudalapalya on Thursday appealed to the Mayor to scrap online sanctioning of plans for the sites upto 40x60 measurement.
Lending support to them at the Palike’s special meeting of the Council here on Thursday was the ruling party leader, Katte Satyanarayana.“I think there is a pressing need for us to relax the online norms for the smaller sites,” he said.
But, if the Council gives into the demand, the BBMP will lose funding under the Central government-sponsored JnNURM schemes. One of the many pre-requisites towards the approval of the JnNURM scheme, which has not been currently released by the Centre towards the BBMP, is to ensure complete transparency in the building plan sanction system.
However, Taxation and Finance Committee chairman P N Sadashiva said the realisation of the JnNURM funds can be worked out with a compromise formula. “We can make a rule for sanctioning the plans upto a certain land size without going for the online plan sanction system. However, we will have to think twice before implementing the system,” he said.
Gangbayriah believed that the middle class and lower middle class in the City will face difficulties to go in for online approval. “The online building sanction plans will create an additional burden on these people who are illiterate and technologically handicapped,” he said. He asked the Mayor to issue orders for ensuring that the sub-registrars will continue to sanction the building plans.
Others believe if the smaller sites building approval plans do not go online then corruption will rise as the owners of smaller sites will be at the mercy of touts at the Sub-registrars’ offices.
Heeding the corporators’ appeals, Mayor S K Nataraj said the matter will be discussed in detail with the officers and the Town Planning Department before arriving at any decision.
Currently, the Town Planning Department has already uploaded on their system nearly 80 per cent of the property details related to their plan approval. But none have been approved.