CHENNAI: The Municipal Administration department, headed by Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay, issued orders on Monday for the streamlining of town planning approvals in urban local bodies in order to prevent rent seeking by intermediaries and staff.
At a review meeting of the department, chaired by Additional Chief Secretary Gagandeep Singh Bedi, urban local bodies were directed to make building and layout approval processes faster, more transparent and less susceptible to corruption. Rural local bodies are expected to follow suit, officials said.
Planning approvals handled by urban local bodies, including municipal corporations, municipalities and town panchayats outside the Chennai metropolitan area, span five broad areas: building plan approvals for residential and commercial structures; layout and development approvals delegated to local bodies; subdivision of plots; change of land use from one category to another; and regularisation of unauthorised or deviated constructions.
These processes are governed by the Tamil Nadu Combined Development and Building Rules. While urban local bodies receive applications and issue building licences, planning permission for layouts is sanctioned by the relevant planning authority, which is the CMDA within the Chennai metropolitan area, and the Directorate of Town and Country Planning or its associated planning authorities and new town development authorities elsewhere in the state.
In many cases councillors have been acting as intermediaries, claiming to facilitate approvals at each stage and allegedly demanding bribes based on building size and other factors, corporation staff have alleged. Sources said that buildings under construction are frequently found to have plan violations. In such cases, councillors, usually operating through middlemen, threaten to halt construction unless money changes hands.
“They pressure engineers at the zonal level to issue stop-work notices. If that fails, they file complaints through persons posing as activists and intimidate residents. Since the owners have already invested in construction or taken loans, they end up paying,” said a corporation official. Plinth-level inspections to identify plan violations are carried out by zonal-level engineers. Lock-and-seal notices are issued by the competent authority, at the level of the zonal executive engineer or above.