Minister Khader Introduces Legislation Digitizing Building License Approvals and Sets Telecom Tower Regulations
Mangaluru: “The approval for building plans, layout, and change-in-plans can now be done online. This facility of availing the license online will be presented on June 15th in the Banquet Hall, Bengaluru. Karnataka is the first state in the country to implement an online system at the corporation level and urban authority level. This facility will make it easy for the general public to obtain building licenses and layout plan approvals. The people who construct 30×40 houses can get the license via self-certification online process. It is no longer required of them to go anywhere. If they fill the online application and obtain a certificate, that will be enough. We will be releasing it on June 11th. This is a high-level policy that has been drafted” said Minister for Housing and Urban Development UT Khader in a press meet held at the Circuit House, Kadri here, on June 4.
Addressing the mediapersons Khader said, “I had spoken about bringing this policy as soon as I was made a minister. Since then, I spoke to several software companies and now, this is the result. The second issue is about the mobile tower. This policy concerning telecom towers is the first of its kind in the whole country. When I became the Urban Development Minister, I received a lot of complaints from common citizens about the location of these telecom towers. There were a lot of issues surrounding the installation of such towers. Some people used to build it and some people didn’t. Even those people who were installing the mobile towers used to complain. All of these complaints were because of a lack of policy. After analyzing all the issues, we have drafted this piece of legislation. Under this policy, the people who are installing telecom towers have to register themselves at the Panchayat or Corporation offices. They also have to pay a fee for registering themselves. This bill also has a clause stating that telecom towers must be built a certain distance away from places such as schools, colleges, hospitals, and places of worship.”
Khader further said, “Before building telecom towers on old buildings, the person must obtain certification from our engineer. Now, many other state legislative members are looking to implement these amendments in their own, respective states. Anyone who wants to erect new mobile towers has to follow this policy. For all those who have already built the mobile towers, we are giving them three months to rectify the structure as per the issued guidelines.”
DCC President Harish Kumar, Sadashiv Ullal, and others were also present.