BMC gives World Bank presentation on easing construction permit norms

More than a year since the BMC eased procedure for construction permits in May 2015, the civic body, in a bid to improve India’s ranking in the World Bank’s ease of doing business chart, on Monday made a presentation to the bank. The World Bank will now come up with new rankings within the next three months.

Speaking to The Asian Age, a senior official from the development plan department said, “We have basically halved the number of procedures needed in issuing permits. We have relaxed norms in the cost factor, the time needed and the procedures involved for getting the permits." Permissions that earlier required between 147 and 365 days now need only 41 days for clearance; costs have reduced from 25 per cent to 2 per cent of the project; and procedures have been brought down to just 10 clearances from the previous 40. The municipal commissioner said that the BMC had managed to do so by introducing a single window online clearance for all stages required to be cleared during the process. The civic body had also introduced self-certification for certain documents and enabled digital signatures of officials for faster online clearances.

The official further said, “This procedure has been functional for the past year. During this period, the BMC received a total of 412 proposals for clearances and cleared about 327 of them." Previously, India's score was among the lowest in “Dealing with construction permits”, where it ranked 184th out of 189 countries. Following this, the BMC had issued a circular to ease procedures.