The move to bring in more transparency in the civic body by putting up all building plans it has approved for public access on the BMC website has hit a hurdle and is getting a rethink. Some legal and technical challenges have cropped up,civic officials say. Top officials in the development plan department of the BMC feel it will not be feasible for the civic body to put up each and every building plan on the website stating that architects are likely to raise copyright issues. Besides,the plans are too heavy to be all on website,they said. In a meeting with the Maharashtra Chamber of Housing Industry (MCHI) last week,Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan had announced that the BMC will put up all building plans approved by it on its website so that people can see them and raise objections in case there are irregularities. A senior official of the BMCs DP department,however,said they are consulting both the legal department and the Information Technology (IT) department before they decide to go ahead with it. Our IT engineers told us it will be technically impossible to upload so many building plans on the website because of their huge size. And officials from the legal department said architects are likely to object to putting their detailed plans on the website. These documents are not exactly confidential in nature,but are not necessarily public documents either. At present,RTIs are filed by those who want details of building plans. The same can be continued, he said. The building plan includes detailed architectural drawings and these files are generally heavy. Putting them online is one of the many recent initiatives by the BMC to usher in transparency. The other such plan is to put up work orders issued by the BMC across its offices and departments so that citizens can check what works have been approved .
