Acting on the directions of the High Court of Karnataka, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) on Friday issued guidelines for its officials to regularly monitor the process of construction of new buildings after sanctioning plans as per the Building Bylaws-2003 to prevent illegal construction at stage construction itself.
Also, BBMP’s Chief Commissioner Tushar Giri Nath gave an undertaking to the court that during his tenure in the post that he would strictly implement the bylaws and initiate action against the erring officials.
As per the guidelines, the assistant director of BBMP’s town planning department, soon after the plan sanction, will have to identify the Building Plinth Line (BPL) in the presence of property owners or their representatives.
Photographs
Officers/engineers will have to upload the BPL along with GPS coordinates (from the centre and four corners of the site) and photographs to BBMP’s online portal meant for building plan approval.
After commencement of construction, the authorised jurisdictional engineer will have to periodically inspect the construction site to ensure that foundation is laid adhering to the sanctioned plan and update the GPS coordinates and the photographs in the portal.
The guidelines also state that officers who fail to inspect and upload the data to the portal as per the schedule, would face penal action as per Section 252 of the BBMP Act, 2020, besides facing departmental enquiry while being kept under suspension.
Justice R. Nataraj, who had last month pointed out that the jurisdictional engineers are are not inspecting under-construction buildings despite such mandate in the bylaws-2003, had observed that such a scenario has “emboldened property owners to violate the building plan with impunity.”
When the petition came up for hearing on Friday, BBMP counsel K.N. Putte Gowda submitted the circular containing the elaborate guidelines.
Engineers go scot-free
“Unfortunately, it is the owners who would be later held responsible for not complying with the sanctioned plan and the engineer concerned would go scot-free,” the court had said while directing the BBMP to issue necessary guidelines to ensure that sanctioned plans are sent to the jurisdictional engineers within seven days of approval for monitoring.
Meanwhile, the court directed the BBMP to publish the guidelines in Kannada and English language newspapers so that the general public was made aware of the guidelines on inspection of buildings under construction.
The court had issued the directions during the hearing of a petition filed by Paresh Shah and others complaining about construction of an apartment complex by deviating sanctioned plan.
