Buoyed by the jump in its ranking, from 181 to 175, in the global ease of doing business index for the construction sector due to the implementation of online approval of projects in just two metros, Delhi and Mumbai, the Centre is going to put in place the same mechanism in 500 other cities across India by March 2018.
In Mumbai, as against 42 permissions needed earlier, the online approval system implemented last year required just eight permissions.
The average time taken in Mumbai for 42 approvals was 189 days before the online system was put in place. Now, the time has been reduced to just 60 days.
Similarly, in Delhi against 29 types of permissions needed, just eight are required now and the timeframe has been cut down from 212 days to 60 days.
The Centre expects a sharp increase in its ease of doing business ranking through this move. Overall, India has jumped 30 places in the rankings based on all sectors.
Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri told The Pioneer that on the basis of the Delhi and Mumbai experiment, the Ministry has decided to extend the approval of the building plan online to 500 cities under the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) projects.
The local municipal bodies have been asked to simplify the procedure and reduce human interface in approvals of building plans.
Ministry officials said they have informed the World Bank team that procedures/steps for obtaining a construction permit in Delhi and Mumbai has been reduced to eight and the time taken for all approvals has been brought down to 60 days.
“The quality of regulation has been enhanced by introducing latent Defect liability, stipulating qualifications for professionals and introducing risk-based classification of all buildings, enabling fast approvals,” officials said.
According to the World Bank, India still lags in areas like starting a business, enforcing contracts and construction permits.
The Narendra Modi Government, which has vowed to remove red-tape, eliminate procedural delays and turn India into a sought-after investment destination, has set a target of leapfrogging to a rank of 90 in 2017-18 and 30 in the Doing Business survey by 2030. The ease of doing business is an index created by the World Bank to measure regulations directly affecting businesses and overall environment.
India was ranked 185 among 190 nations surveyed on the parameter of getting a construction permit in the rankings last year.
The AMRUT project was launched in 2015, with the aim of providing basic civic amenities like water supply, sewerage, urban transport, parks so as to improve the quality of life for all, especially the poor and the disadvantaged. The focus of the mission is on infrastructure creation that has a direct link to the provision of better services to citizens. The project fund is divided among States/UTs in an equitable formula in which 50:50 weightage is being given to the urban population of each State/Union Territory and number of statutory towns.