New Delhi: Union Minister of Urban Development and Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation M. Venkaiah Naidu said on Wednesday that considerable progress has been made towards enhancing the ease of doing of construction business in urban areas by streamlining existing procedures, adopting appropriate technology and by empowering urban local bodies to sanction a wide range of approvals.
He was presiding over a high-level review meeting here.
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapati Raju, Minister of Environment, Forests and Climate Change Prakash Javdekar and Minister of Tourism and Culture Dr. Mahesh Sharma also participated in the review meeting.
Secretaries of respective ministries, besides senior officials from the Prime Minister’s Office and Cabinet Secretariat also attended the hour long review.
Participants were informed that Colour Coded Zonal Maps (CCZM) for 28 defence airports being used for civilian purposes will be developed for easy sanction of height clearances on the lines of what is being done for civilian airports.
To begin with, CCZMs will be evolved for four such airports viz., Pune, Jamnagar, Chandigarh and Bagdogra by April, 2016. It was decided that the Ministry of Civil Aviation will assist in this regard. Such CCZMs will be shared with municipal bodies for according height clearances.
It was also decided that works of Defence Act, 1903 will be suitably amended to remove hurdles for construction activities near defence establishments.
Distance from the actual storage point will be considered for restricting the construction instead of from the boundary wall of ammunition storage dumps at present, which will bring down the zone of restriction.
Instructions have been issued to service headquarters and headquarters of all defence organisations for sharing information along with maps of restricted zones to municipal bodies.
Area commanders will be required to decide in 30 days on clearing constructions in restricted zones failing which approvals would be taken as deemed.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Civil Aviation has reported that applications received by the Airports Authority of India for height clearances in airport zones have come down by over 200 per month further to development of CCZMs for 12 airports that account for 58 percent of total such applications and making them available to respective urban local bodies.
These airports are : Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Amritsar, Bengaluru, Nagpur and Chennai. CCZM for Jaipur airport has been recently completed.
CCZMs for nine more airports viz., Patna, Bhubaneswar, Ranchi, Aurangabad, Surat, Vijayawada, Thiruvananthapuram and Puducherry will be developed by June 2016 and for the remaining 14 major airports by December 2016. This will enable respective urban local bodies accord height clearences in respect of almost all cases, doing away with the need to approach AAI for the same.
It was also informed that the Ministry of Civil Aviation also commissioned improved version of online NOCAS (No Objection Certificate Application System) eliminating human interface and enabling faster issue of NOC through automatic calculations of permissible heights in airport zones with applicants being able to track the status.
Ministry of Culture has come out with a mobile based app that enables online approvals for construction in the vicinity of monuments in just 72 hours through integration of websites of National Monument Authority and those of respective urban local bodies. Time taken at present is about 90 days.
Prime Minister’s Office desired that integration of websites of National Monument Authority and those of Delhi and Mumbai be completed by March this year.
In association with ISRO, Ministry of Culture is developing colour coded maps for 281 monuments that account for most of the construction related approvals using which municipal bodies can accord approvals in quick time.
Ministry of Consumer Affairs has completed revision of the national building code enabling speedy building approvals and the same will be notified in the next two weeks.
Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change has come out with revised and simplified environmental norms and the same will be notified at the earliest after consultations with the Ministry of Urban Development. Urban local bodies and state governments will be empowered to accord approvals at their level based on their willingness and ability.
Ministry of Urban Development will soon issue Model Building Bye laws incorporating all revised and simplified norms and processes enabling urban local bodies to approve building plans in quick time there by enhancing the ease of doing construction business in urban areas. (ANI)