New buildings will come under scanner

New multi-storeyed constructions in the city will come under the scanner of an inter-departmental team before they get electricity and water connections. The team, consisting of officials from Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA), Metrowater, Tamil Nadu Electricity Board and other departments, would inspect such buildings to ensure that they adhered to a set of norms recently finalised by a High Court-appointed monitoring committee. Completion certificates would be issued only if there were no violations. The certificates are necessary to obtain water and electricity connections, as per the court order. Builders have been claiming that their work has been hit ever since the court order. Builders' Association of India vice-chairman and Chozha Foundation promoter M.K. Sundaram said that not a single completion certificate had been issued by the CMDA since October, 2006. "At least, 20 applicants are waiting for the certificates. The rest have not applied ... they are waiting for the CMDA to come up with norms so that their applications will not be rejected and they will not be termed as violators," he said. The norms should be "practical and viable", allowing for minor variations from the approved plan, he added. According to sources, the norms would allow for some amount of variations. But the inter-departmental team would ensure that the construction of the building was complete. It would also make sure that there was adequate space for parking and setback before issuing completion certificates. Already the team, which was constituted to speed up the process of issuing the certificates, found serious violations by 40 commercial and special buildings, pointed out CMDA vice-chairman R. Santhanam. He is slated to meet the builders soon regarding the norms.