CHENNAI: In an effort to curb rampant violations of development regulation in construction of ‘ordinary buildings’, the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) has agreed in principle to make Completion Certificate mandatory, before other agencies provided power, water and sewer supplies.
At present, only ‘special buildings’ have to produce Completion Certificates to obtain the utility connections, while ‘ordinary buildings’ — ground+first floor or stilt+two floor residential building with six units, or commercial buildings less than 300 square metres that do not fall within the definition of special building, group developments or multi-storeyed buildings — are exempted. The move to insist on Completion Certificate was first proposed by the Chennai Corporation.
The Madras High Court had recently sought to know the measures taken by the authorities after it came to light that only one per cent of the buildings in George Town area were constructed as per the development regulations. Sources said that before making Completion Certificate for ordinary building mandatory, a committee will be constituted to work out the modalities. Once this is completed, CMDA will notify Completion Certificate for ordinary buildings under Rule-4 (5) of Development Regulations. As per the current Development Regulations under Second Master Plan, Completion Certificate is mandatory for special buildings, group developments, multi-storied buildings and institutional buildings (exceeding 300 square metres in the floor area).
It is learnt that CMDA has requested the Municipal Administration and Water Supply (MAWS) department and Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB) to issue instructions to the agencies concerned to extend service connections only on production of Completion Certificate.
Even as the attention is primarily on special buildings, including high-rises, there has also been concern over rampant violations by ordinary buildings. Even the High Court-appointed monitoring committee had, during a meeting held in November last, highlighted the violations by owners of ordinary buildings.
The committee members expressed concern over the tendency of building additional floors, converting stilt floor space meant for parking into regular use, conversion of building usage from lower order to higher order and other deviations in form of setbacks and other parameters over and above the approved ordinary buildings.
“Enforcement does not mean only locking and sealing and demolition of buildings. It also requires involvement of various agencies for a coordinate and sustained action with a specific focus,” said a member of the Monitoring Committee.