State's first BPMS centre vows to earn maximum revenue in 2023-24

Rafique Aziz

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar:

The state’s first Building Plan Management System (BPMS) established at the Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar Municipal Corporation (CSMC) has vowed to offer quality service to issue a maximum number of building permissions (BP) and collect good revenue in the current financial year 2023-24.

BPMS offers free assistance

The reliable sources in Town Planning (TP) section said, "The TP section is headed by Deputy Director Manoj Garje. The BPMS which is a unit part of the TP section is headed by Sanket Jain. To maintain transparency and speed up the process, the state government has made online submission of the application for building permission mandatory from April 1, 2023. Earlier, the offline and online modes of submission were open from 2019 to 2023. The registered architect submits the file on behalf of the property holder. However, it has been observed that some architects were facing inconvenience in uploading property documents, building plans and maps from their offices or homes (at their convenience). For their poor network connectivity, they would squarely blame the software or cite reasons and term the auto system as a time-consuming procedure. The past civic chief Dr Abhijeet Chaudhari, find a way out of it and initiated setting up BPMS to overcome such complaints. Now, the centre invites the applicant or his representing architect to submit the documents from the office (if have any personal complaints) and provides them with every possible technical support. They can upload the jumbo documents through high-configuration computers in BPMS. The service is offered free of cost. This has helped reduce the complaints and the centre/section hopes of collecting maximum revenue by issuing a maximum number of building permissions, this year.”

Time-consuming reforms

Generally, it takes 30 days (if all the documents are up to date as per the requirement) to clear one file seeking building permissions. The delay happens only in fulfilling necessary corrections by the applicant after pointing out the shortcomings. The deputy director (TP section) has introduced a few changes in the system. It includes uploading Google Maps and DP plans to reduce mistakes, and delays and save time and energy in cross-verification. The reservations made by the CSMC for different purposes and the encroachments (if any) are also detected due to the maps and plans," pointed out the sources adding that the assistant director of the TP section is A B Deshmukh.