TG-bPASS Must for Gram Panchayats

Hyderabad: Property owners taking the erstwhile Gram Panchayat (GP) permissions which are backdated has become a common practice in the urban local bodies (ULBs) outside Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC). Irony is several property owners are not aware that the GP permission is not a valid document and all the permission should be applied only through Telangana Building Permission Approval and Self Certification System (TG-bPASS).

Shankarpally municipality, Manikonda municipality, Narsingi municipality, Badangpet Municipal Corporation, Boduppal Municipal Corporation and Peerzadiguda Municipal Corporation are some such examples where buildings are being constructed based on the GP permissions. These GP permissions are not valid after 2018 when the state government then, has converted the gram panchayats and nagar panchayats around GHMC into municipalities and municipal corporations.

The state government then had also clarified that the GP permissions are not valid and all the permissions should be processed only through TS-bPASS. Several property owners, especially middle income families fall in the trap of some brokers and a few architects who set up their office outside municipal offices and opt for GP permissions to build houses. The property owners are briefed by the brokers and a few architects that the GP permissions are legal and valid.

Generally, while GP permission is granted for around `50,000, under TS-bPASS the building permission fees for 2,300 sft built up area is around `2 lakh.

Speaking to Deccan Chronicle some property owners said that, when they spend over a crore to build a house excluding the cost of interior designing, why would they refrain from paying a lakh or two as building permission fee and rued that due to wrong guidance, their structures and floors will be illegal forever.

“I work as a software engineer, one of my neighbours introduced me to a person who draws building plans and he got us the GP permission for `50,000 and we were very happy then, but later members of the resident welfare association (RWAs) informed that the document is not valid,” he said. “The worst part is, now I need to be in good books with the corporator and local leaders too,” he rued.