Planning officers to be held responsible for building violations

Accordingly, it has issued a new order stating that henceforth, the Town Planing officers will be held responsible for any building violations in the city and can be subject to criminal prosecution. “Earlier the law would state that the ward engineers would be responsible to inspect the building violations on the spot. Now, we have amended the law to ensure that the responsibility would be on the person who will sanction the building plans,” informed sources in BBMP.

With a single window system in place to sanction building plans on a 30x40 or 40x60 site, the plan would be approved by the Assistant Engineer who would be present at the
window.

Depending upon the number of floors and other calculations the plan would then proceed higher up the ladder for further approval, if required. As a result, while the sanctioning authority would be someone in the BBMP headquarters, the on-field inspection onus would befall the Ward Engineers. “This resulted in numerous cases of building violations in the city,” informed BBMP officials.

Hence, with the order brought out on September 30 2009, the onus will now be placed on the person who authorises the building plan.