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Ludhiana: One year on, building plan approval system still in offline mode

LUDHIANA: It has been more than a year since the online building plan approval system was introduced in Ludhiana, but as many as 94 residential and industrial schemes are yet to be uploaded online. As a result, people living in these areas still need to get offline (manual) approval to their building plans.

Due to the lacunae, the online system has failed to gain popularity.


Moreover, people are not habituated to get their building plans approved before going ahead with construction work.

Officials of Ludhiana municipal corporation claimed they had requested the private company dealing with the software to upload these schemes, but nothing had been done so far.

The substantial area in Zone D falls in the category where residential schemes have not been uploaded online. The areas included BRS Nagar, SBS Nagar, Rishi Nagar, Kitchlu Nagar, Udham Singh Nagar, Tagore Nagar, Ehsan Road, Deep Nagar, Dhobhi Ghat Scheme, Upkar Nagar, New Kundanpuri, Malerkotla House, Sham Nagar, Haibowal, Heera Singh Road, Ghumar Mandi, Gurdev Nagar, Sarabha Nagar, Model Gram, Lajpat Nagar, Harnam Nagar, Model Town Extension, New Model Town, Feroze Gandhi Market, Atam Nagar, Punjab Mata Nagar, etc.

Besides, 80% of the area falling in Zone B is fully under the industrial layout. Zone A areas include the old city, and here people go for renovation and alteration, and there is no provision for submission of online plans for alteration.

An official claimed that as many as 1,605 applications had come from people who wanted to get approval for the building plan, but 1,038 buildings were under construction without any approval.

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He said they had checked the ground reality and imposed a penalty. Out of these 1,038 buildings, 1,026 were regularized after taking a composition fee. He said people do not come for approval to the building plan, because it takes a long time for manual approval.

Moreover, the external development charges of Ludhiana MC are the highest in Punjab, so people do not want to pay that much, sources said.

Assistant town planner (headquarters) S S Bindra said, “Out of 94 layout plans, we have sent scanned records of 85 schemes to the company, but these are yet to be uploaded on the software. The new construction is coming up in these areas, and since there is no provision to accept their applications online, we are clearing the building plans manually.”

He said they had sent a report to the local bodies department for review, and hopefully, in the coming days, the schemes will be uploaded, and people will get their building plans approved online.

The online building plans approval scheme was launched in August 2018, and was a dream project of the then local bodies minister Navjot Sidhu. However, the scheme could not gain momentum since its launch. Only 700 online building plans had been received in 14 months.

Plans Approved

Applications for online building plan received | 700

Applications for offline building plan received | 1,386

Total under-construction buildings | 1,038

* Period from August 2018 to October 2019

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