Erring building permit software haunts Thiruvananthapuram Corporation

Thiruvananthapuram: The town planning wing under the city corporation has been unable to cope with the hundreds of building permit applications. It is learnt that of the total 7,467 applications received, the civic body could approve only 3,072. Since the introduction of Intelligent Building Plan Management System (IBPMS), the processing of applications has gone haywire.

With complaints mounting, the civic body has sought the permission of the local self-government department to temporarily stop the usage of the software. Mayor V.K. Prasanth told DC that the civic body had given a letter to the government seeking permission to manually settle the pending applications.

"Thousands of applications are pending and there are widespread complaints from the designers and officers handling the software. Thiruvananthapuram is one of the few corporations which were willing to adopt the software. But its technical issues have to be fixed. Our request is to allow us to clear the pending applications," said the mayor.

"We will hold special adalats to clear the pending files. We have nothing against the software. It's just a phase and once the software is fool-proof there will not be any issue," he added.

With no development team in the state to fix the issues in the software, which is clearly in a testing stage, it is becoming a major challenge for the civic body. The IBPMS software was launched in the state last year. "We have requested the software team in Pune to fix the technical snags," said an official.

Kowdiar Harikumar of All-Kerala Building Designers Organisation said that the software is a total fiasco. "The software is unable to process applications for construction activities in cents of land. Even if the construction plan complies with the building rules, the software fails to approve it," said Harikumar.