Govt’s Online Building Plan Approval In Bhubaneswar Makes Process More ‘Complicated & Costly’

Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government’s bid to go online for approval of building plan for convenience of the applicants  of Bhubaneswar seems to have made the process more complicated and costly.

The government launched the process of submission of application in the building plan approval system (BPAS) on Sustainable Urban Service by Odisha Government’s (SUJOG) portal in January. Its purpose was to fast-track approval of building plan as part of the e-governance services under ‘5T’.

But architects and realtors have complained that the new software instead of making the building plan approval easy, has made it more complicated. In a memorandum submitted to the Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA), Odisha chapter of the Indian Institute of Architects (IIA) has stated that the online process, introduced by the Housing and Urban Development department for BDA and Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC), is ‘not user friendly at all’.

The IIA said they were facing problems while uploading information, drawing and documents in the new software. “The new software asks for uploading of drawing of a building plan in different layers making the process cumbersome for the architects. Besides it seeks 100 pc more scrutiny fee each time one wants to make correction to his/her application,” TNIE quoted an architect as saying.

Pointing out other difficulties faced by it, AFORD, a realtor’s association,  said the new software is not fully compliant to Odisha Development Authority rules. The approved building plan could not be downloaded for days as the website had stopped functioning properly.

To make the maters worse, despite repeated requests to SUJOG coordinators as well as BDA and BMC, the technical issues remain unresolved.

A SUJOG official said there were glitches in the process for some days after server of the platform crashed at the State Data Centre in OCAC in May third week, but it has been rectified. “The issue has now been addressed and the system has been made completely operational since Sunday,” he added.

Member, Planning of BDA Gouri Sankar Bhuyan said the architects are required to submit project drawings in layers as process of scrutiny which was being earlier done in manual mode. Sujog has been asked to rework on error rectification in application to prevent repayment of scrutiny fees, he added.