BUILDING PLANS CAN BE FILED ONLINE FOR APPROVAL- DELHI MAYOR

In three months time from now, Delhites will have the facility of filing building plans and getting its approval online, making the system transparent and corruption free, according to Ms Arti Mehra, Mayor of Delhi.

Ms Mehra was speaking at an interactive session with the members of the PHD Chamber in Delhi on the subject Delhi Vision 2010. “ We are endeavoring to put in place a public friendly transparent systems to reduce if not eliminate the hassles being faced by the citizens. Online approval of the building plans and similar steps that are being contemplated by the MCD will attack the root of the malaise, eliminate Inspector Raj and drudgery being faced by the citizens for complying with various rules and regulations of the MCD,” she said. Online filing of property tax introduced by the MCD, designed and executed by the TCS was a great success. More than 1.5 lakh assesses preferred to file the tax returns online and yet a few still wanted to file manually. She hoped that more and more people would avail easy system of online tax filing in the coming years.

Mentioning that the MCD was committed to develop Delhi into a modern city with world class civic amenities, Ms Mehra said that such image makeover should be above party politics. Multi-agency involvement in the Administration of Delhi has had its own problems since the accountability could not be traced to a single agency. For instance, important civic amenities like water , transport, land development, sanitation etc are supervised and development programs are implemented by different agencies. “Ordinary people get confused in the midst of several agencies involved in the development works. A glaring example is the implementation of zonal plans, which are under the purview of the Centre, while local area plans are with the MCD,” she added. Yet, she said that she is taking utmost care to have periodic meetings and consultations with Lt Governor and the Chief Minister for co-ordinating the development works. Sometimes vote bank politics also come in the way of undertaking development works. An area like Qutub Institutional Area do not have voters and, therefore, may not be the priority areas for undertaking development works by the elected representatives using funds allocated to them. Yet, she said that considerable amount has been spent to develop the civic facilities in that area.

Ms Mehra disclosed that the MCD would import the best technology for solid waste management and to make Delhi a 'zero waste' region. Plans are afoot to crush the wastes within hours of its collection and covert it into bricks that can be used for construction proposes. She also disclosed that vigorous exercise is on to clean the drains round the year in order to insulate the city from water logging. This year during the heaviest of the rains, clogged water has been removed or drained on its own within three to four hours. Plans have also been drawn up improve the civic facilities in Okhla Industrial area, she added.

Underscoring the need for genuine public-private partnership in toning up the civic facilities, she said that the past experience in this regard was not encouraging. Land was alloted to the private sector for running charitable purpose of building schools and hospitals at Rs 1. But often, such institutions have found violating the agreement and running institutions on commercial lines.

In his welcome remarks Mr. Sanjay Bhatia, President, PHD Chamber said that there should be greater participation of the common citizen in management towards improving civic services and there is a need for simplicity, transparency in the system in functioning manpower planning, right sizing the existing set up and reduction in wastage of resources etc. for overall improvement of the quality of civic amenities provided by the MCD and also better governance.

Others spoke at the meeting included Mr VK Gupta, Chairman, Standing Committee, MCD and Mr Vijay Mehta, Chairman, Delhi and NCR Committee, PHD Chamber.