Hospital body urges AMC to waive BU permit requirement for Form-C renewal

Exemplifying the same, Dr Shashikala Sahu, a gynaecologist who has been associated with Bhagyodaya Maternity and Nursing Home in Ranip in Ahmedabad, said, “The building was made in 1984 and being in the jurisdiction of gram panchayat as Ranip was a ‘gamtal’ initially, followed by municipality and now municipal corporation. During the state’s impact fee regularisation scheme a decade ago, we were told that BU permit is not needed if we have not made any changes to the building plan, which we haven’t, as the establishment is small and falls under rural jurisdiction. We have had no issues in renewing Form-C earlier but this time we have received a query on the BU permit and thus renewal remains pending. With no Form-C, we can only conduct OPD services as indoor patient admissions are not allowed.”

Dr Gadhvi pointed out that “there must be some lacuna in the law” as per the town planning department’s own submission, nearly 50 per cent of the buildings don’t have valid BU permits, a submission also put forth before the Gujarat HC by the state government in a public interest litigation concerning fire and building safety, which was initiated following a fire at Shrey Hospital in August 2020, killing eight patients.

“This policy does not take into account the fact that for small medical establishments which do not see ambulance movements or don’t have emergency facilities like that at bigger hospitals,” added Dr Gadhvi.