Bhubaneswar: Fees collected by Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) for ‘unauthorised’ building plan approvals between from 2015 to 2023 led to a revenue loss of Rs 48 crore for Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC), according to an RTI reply.
The RTI response revealed that the BDA continued to provide plan approvals to buildings and layouts of plots for those eight years without having the authority and collected fees under different heads from the applicants.
As per the reply, BDA collected Rs 2.34 crore towards scrutiny fees, Rs 4.79 crore for sanction, Rs 7.12 crore for compounding, Rs 18.54 crore as labour cess, Rs 3.26 lakh as retention fees, and Rs 15.31 crore in other fees.
The collection was made since April 2015, although the BDA itself, via a notification, transferred the power of approving building plans to BMC. “The fees collected towards building plan approval have been demanded from the BDA,” city mayor Sulochana Das said.
The matter was raised in the meetings of the civic body in the past when corporators asked the senior members to recover the fees collected by BDA. “The BMC didn’t have sufficient manpower to handle the building plan wing,” a senior BMC official said.
He said that since the required manpower and expertise remained with the BDA, it continued to provide building plan approvals. “In 2023, the planning wing was opened in BMC, and it has been granting plan approval since then,” the official added.
As per rules, building plan approvals, layout plans and dealing with unauthorised construction in the BMC area lie with the civic body. Plan approval in the outer parts of the city lies with the BDA.
Earlier, the BMC was given the power to provide plan approvals to low-risk buildings, but since 2015, the entire authority of plan approval has been vested in the civic body. However, BDA continued to give the plan approvals, and in the eight years, it granted permission to 2,858 structures.