Soon,building completion certificates in 7 days

MCD counsel Ajay Arora,along with senior advocate Ravi Shankar Prasad presented this project before a Division Bench of Justice Mukul Mudgal this Wednesday. The aim is to simplify the tedious course of issuing completion certificates.

The Delhi Municipal Corporation Act says every building owner in the Capital should procure a certificate before he or she occupies the place. This document is also a prerequisite for water or electricity connections to the building.

Arora was candid when he said: “These days,it is easier to arrange the money,get a loan and construct a house than get a completion certificate from the civic body.”

The lawyer,however,topped the week’s work with a feather in his cap. From May 25,he told the court,any application for certificates would be processed and issued in seven days flat. The court was hearing the civic body’s plans to improve the quality of its operations and infrastructure,as part of several public interest litigations that were filed soon after the demolition drive last year.

Arora said: “We shall not go into the nitty-gritty of building plans or construction. Instead,we will put our faith in the architect’s words.”

From now on,every application for a completion certificate will be accompanied by an affidavit — containing a sworn statement from a registered architect — which certified that the structure had been built according to building bylaws.

In addition,the application will also be accompanied by proof of ownership and a certificate on the structural stability of the building. “We (MCD) will not look beyond the architect’s good word,” Arora said.

This is a far cry from the present module of “minutely” checking each and every application for faults. “We found that applicants were constantly harassed. Certificates would get delayed at times if an official found a window too long or too small,” the counsel said.

On Wednesday,advocate Ravi Shankar Prasad had told the Bench that the project would drastically bring down delay. The civic body,the lawyer said,was inspired by an earlier plan that had talked of online sanctions for building plans.

In fact,the MCD has already begun the practice of issuing certificates quickly. It came to court armed with data from February to April this year. The counsel informed the judge that 417 applications were granted permission within seven days in these three months. The total applications received were 463.

Arora also said: “We are also planning to start an online mechanism to receive and process these applications. We are in talks with the Central Railway Information System (CRIS) to devise a suitable software.”