Mumbai’s new building reforms to get India into top 50 in World Business rankings

According to information, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), working to rationalise and introduce far-reaching reforms in the various permits that builders are mandated to obtain at various stages of construction work, has built a single window clearance facility, which it has claimed would reduce the total number of processes for obtaining all construction permits to just eight, and reduce the average time for completing the entire approval cycle to just 60 days.

In 2017, the World Bank report had found that it took 37 steps and 128.5 days to obtain a construction permit in the financial capital. It had further indicated that the cost of a construction permit in Mumbai was on the higher side. With the new set of reforms expected to kick off on February 20, Mumbai civic officials are claiming that the cost associated with obtaining the construction permits would also go down.

Earlier on January 29, the NITI Aayog had invited Mumbai civic commissioner Ajoy Mehta to review the various measures being planned in this regard. While the Mumbai municipality has already introduced a common GIS platform for integrating all building approvals, senior government officials said that the meeting on Tuesday will focus on the civic body’s demand approvals and NOCs required from various state and central agencies be integrated on this common platform.

In other words, the plan to reduce the hassles in obtaining a construction permit by making travel to multiple offices redundant. “We have designed a common online application form for all approvals,” said Mehta. With all three stages – the building approval, the plinth approval, and completion-cum-occupancy certificate now approved online, the single window facility is also aimed at reducing discretion in the approval process, officials said. “The building permit will now be issued online with digital signature. A developer or an architect won’t need to visit any department or office,” Mehta said.

In fact, the new facility has already seen a partial rollout. Last December, Fadnavis had launched a GIS portal – One MCGM – which integrated maps and permission processes of various civic agencies. Later, Maharashtra’s Revenue department integrated its own software application with this portal for allowing property card extracts to be mined on a real time basis. “Earlier it used to take 17 days to obtain such extracts. These are now being made available within a day’s time.”

To further the reform, the civic body has now approached the union ministries of Environment and Forests, Railways, Defence, Petroleum, and Aviation to develop software applications that can similarly be integrated on the same platform. “We have already plotted the high tide line and buffer zones for railways, defence and petroleum installations. We have now approached the ministries to ratify these, and also develop software applications on their side that would allow permissions and NOCs required from them to be issued online,” said Mehta. The NITI Aayog has already indicated that it favours the move during the meeting on January 29, said officials. If all the Central agencies also agree to the plan, it’ll also be the first such exercise when maps and plans belonging to lands owned by central agencies would be superimposed on a city’s development plan.

In another move to cut red tape in building approvals, the municipality has also decided to randomise its own zonal approval system. “Currently all plans belonging to one area are cleared by a fixed set of engineers. But under the new regime, the approvers would be randomly selected from a zone,” an official informed. To cut down on the time taken for obtaining permits, the civic body is also set to introduce a joint site inspection system involving various departments from February 20 onwards. The municipality has claimed that the initial building plan approval (or IOD) can be issued within 15 days of an application under the new system, and that the entire building approval cycle can be completed within two months. Incidentally while the Centre wants the civic body to do away with the approval for the building’s plinth, civic officials are not entirely in favour of the move.