BMC makes home repair process simple

After much deliberation, the civic body passed a proposal on Monday which seeks to simplify the process of internal structural repairs within residential buildings across Mumbai.

Based on this proposal, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has now also added several more items to the list of tenantable repairs within the house, which currently do not need permissions from the BMC. Also, applicants will be now able to seek all permissions from the BMC for internal structural repairs online.

This clause is part of the Development Control Regulations (DCR), which is part of the Development Plan 2034. A civic official said, “This is part of the BMC’s commitment to make the civic body approachable for all citizens. We are streamlining the procedure to reduce the number of steps involved in receiving permits for structural changes to existing apartments.” The official also clarified that this would reduce red-tapism and small-time cases of graft in the civic body, and make its procedures less tedious.

Residents can now add safety doors to their houses, change the sizes of windows, add more rooms to the house internally, or combine several rooms into one, without approaching the BMC physically. All permissions for these purposes have been converted into online applications.

An official from the DP department said the proposal was part of the DP’s commitment to making all processes associated with the civic body simpler.

He said, “There is a portion of the population that has been living in Mumbai for very long, but in very small houses. If this portion has to meet the rising demands of raising a family, we want to make it simpler for them.”