HYDERABAD: The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) will discontinue its Development Permission Management System (DPMS) from Monday.
It will be replaced by TS-bPass (Telangana State Building Permission Approval and Self-Certification System), a single-window reforms process that provides instant permissions for taking up construction activities.
Officials claim that though DPMS allowed applicants to track their file online and made officials more accountable, the system had no legal sanctity. In addition, the average time taken for issuing building or layout approvals continued to be higher than that prescribed under DPMS. Applicants still had to visit different offices, often multiple times, to obtain no-objection certificates, resulting in delays.
The Introduction of TS-bPass will enable citizens get spot approvals for all building permissions.
The government had introduced DPMS in 2015–16 in all municipalities, corporations and the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) area. Under DPMS, the entire process of receiving applications to issuing permissions, including payment of fees, was online with no human intervention.
Officials soon found the system had lacunae like permissions not being given within the targeted time limit. It also lacked legal sanctity. Following this, corporation officials have decided to stop DPMS and implement TS-bPASS for all residential buildings measuring 75–500 square yards and up to 15 metres in height. With this, building permissions for all residential properties will now be instant without any human intervention.
Permission will be issued on a self-certification mode. Since approvals are ratified documents, banks will honour them towards extending loans. However, for land over 500 sq yards involving residential and non-residential properties, DPMS will continue and permissions will be issued within 21 days.
Chief city planner S. Devender Reddy told Deccan Chronicle that TS-bPASS has received inspiration from TS-iPass introduced in July 2015 as a one-stop online system for issuing industrial building permissions based on self-certification. Government felt a similar single-window system for building permissions layout approvals could also be made applicable in municipal bodies. He said after multiple trials and testing over a few months, GHMC has finally decided to call off DMPS for residential properties for plots measuring up to 500 square yards and building measuring up to 15 metres.
Devender Reddy said GHMC will eventually phase off DPMS and implement TS-bPASS for all non-residential and residential buildings even above 500 square yards and 15 metres in height.
"For the present, if there are shortcomings in applications under DPMS for above 500 square-yard buildings, applicants will be informed within the first week of filing their application, rather than holding it up to 21 days. Our goal is to bring several other citizen-centric laws and reforms in future," he added.
