While the process should not be reduced to a mere formality and all prerequisites for granting building permissions deserving scrupulously to be followed, at the same time inordinate and uncalled for delays needed to be avoided . New buildings , residential, commercial and of other categories whatsoever , must be constructed in such a way that they do not add up to the mess and haphazard ways in which most of the colonies have sprung up in the past few years at many places which calls for adhering to all norms of building bye-laws under the Master Plan and Zonal Development Plan respectively. At the same time, those who have applied for granting permission to the building construction proposals accompanying proper design, layout and other requirements must not suffer on account of delays caused in sending respective NOCs by the concerned departments / agencies. It is learnt that while 60 percent of such proposals are cleared within a reasonable period of time , still 40 percent on the average remain lingering on due to a sort of slow processing by these departments chief among them being Water Works Srinagar , PDD, R&B, Traffic , Srinagar Development Authority etc. In other words, out of a lot of 11000 cases submitted by the Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) to the Housing and Urban Development Department for further doing the needful, only 7500 cases are cleared over a period of nearly a year and a case load of 3500 require disposal . Such a slow trend of clearing building proposals must be improved upon . While we reiterate that on spot fieldinspections , a mandatory prerequisite for granting an NOC , should never be comprised with ,the need at the same time is for a joint inspection by as many departments as possible out of the concerned departments /agencies which could cut down on time and avoid delays to a larger extent . That would prove of great avail which could be of considerable comfort to the applicant and relief from a perpetual tension on account of the delay otherwise caused. New spirit , transparency and innovative ways but without compromising on rules and guidelines must get proper space in this otherwise many a time even allegedly corruption tagged building permission process. That would restore the confidence of the citizens applying for such permissions and they would not mind if a few days more were required to be waited for in getting such permissions. Even for conducting repairs and renovations of buildings , shops , malls etc if falling under such provisions, time bound permissions must be issued or the proposals rejected citing cogent reasons but never kept them pending . What is more important is to ensure whether constructions took place strictly in accordance with the terms and conditions of sanction as also the building plan, size and design as submitted for seeking permissions. Violations even in small measures whether in builtarea or height etc defeated the very purposes of seeking prior permissions. We would , therefore , urge the concerned authorities to start the process of scrutinising of the proposals within a few days of their receipt and convey the deficiency in such scrutiny, if any , to the applicants. From scrutiny stage to other stages including conducting spot inspections , obtaining of various NOCs, granting permissions or rejecting , there must be a time schedule devised so as to give no room for causing unnecessary delays . No one has and should have any objection in the proposals of building permissions undergoing various processes but causing unnecessary delays need to be avoided
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