Online building plan approval system devised for Chandigarh under Smart City Project

KK Yadav, chief executive officer (CEO) of Chandigarh Smart City Ltd, said, “The system has been prepared. Almost all the big cities throughout the country has this system but Chandigarh was lacking on this front. Under this system, all the maps of the properties, including the MC and Estate Office, will be approved online. It will be a relief for the general public. It will be inaugurated in the first week of October. A name for the mobile application, which will be a common platform for various services, will be decided shortly.”

According to the information, there are two categories of the properties. The building plans for below two kanal properties were scrutinized by the Plan Approval Committee of Estate Office and the building plan of properties of more than two kanals were scrutinized by the building branch of the Estate Office.

According to the Building Plans of Chandigarh, owners of the below two kanal properties can file a self declaration building plan. However, owners of more than two kanal properties need to mandatorily file building plans prepared by authorised architectures.

The online building plan approval system was developed by a private firm, Price Waterhouse and Coopers (PWC), which was given the contract to develop 28 modules of the Smart City project at the cost of Rs 11 crore. The 28 modules include 14 modules of e-governance related to the Municipal Corporation, while the others are related to the UT Administration.

NP Sharma, General Manager Chandigarh Smart City Ltd, said, “Online building plan approved module is a part of E-governance. It will be available for the public use shortly.” He informed though in 2018 also, a similar project was launched but the project was failed due to several technical glitches. The Estate Office has all the details of residential. commercial and institutional properties online.