After a year’s break, Patna civic body to start accepting building plans for approval from today

PATNA: After a year of disruption, the Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) will start accepting building plans for clearance on its portal from Tuesday, said an official privy to the development.

The urban development and housing department (UDHD) had restrained all urban local bodies (ULBs) from clearing building maps after amendments to the building bye-laws since February last year. The revised building bye-laws mandated that architects, structural engineers, and town planners registered and authorised by the UDHD were allowed to process the applications for getting the building plans approved by the ULBs.

The process for building plan approval was held up as the architects, structural engineers, and town planners, empanelled by the ULBs, could not register themselves with the town planning division of the UHDH.

“Now, we have received the panel of 794 architects, structural engineers, and town planners, who have got their valid registration from the UDHD. As per the bye-laws, they are authorised to process building plans for all over the state,” said Suresh Prasad Singh, director, town planning, PMC.

The PMC has organised a workshop for architects, town planners, builders, and developers on Tuesday to apprise them about the technicalities of processing their applications through the web portal.

According to the old procedure, each ULBs, qualified to approve the building maps in their respective jurisdictions, had their own list of authorised architects and engineers to process the building plans. “The PMC had as many as 125 such architects and engineers, who are allowed to initiate the building plan approval within the municipal limit. However, they were restrained to process the applications after bye-laws were amended,” said a just retired chief engineer of the PMC.

However, another official of the town planning division of UDHD said that the department had offered a brief reprieve in March this year by allowing authorised architects by the ULBs to process the building plans by the month-end. “This allowed the ULBs to clear pending building plans,” said the official.