mumbai some powers vested with the municipal commissioner to grant building concessions will now be delegated to junior civic officialsthis proposal is part of the bmcs ease of doing business policy and finds a mention in the draft development control rules dcrsince july 2013 most of the 5721 building proposals landed up on the municipal commissioners table for a slew of concessions the new dcr has proposed that the ci vic chief will now retain only 14 of these concessions compared to the existing 35 the remaining will be delegated to junior officials the ease of doing business initiative has already reduced building permissions from over 150 to around 70a senior civic official said out of the 14 concessions whose power the municipal commissioner will hold four are those required as per the maharashtra regional and town planning act 1966 mrtp act and which the civic chief cannot delegate to anyone else the remaining 10 were found to be crucial and have been retained as well the move comes as it was realized that most proposals on reaching the building proposal department land up at the commissioners table for some concession or the othera few of the concessions for which the proposal no longer needs to come to the commissioner are to allow society offices on the upper floors allow podium on plot having area less than 1500 sq metresin case of most of these concessions for which a proposal does not need to come before the municipal commissioner a provision has already been made in the dcr 2034 almost all these concessions which were a part of the dp 1991 will now be delegated to the executive engineer deputy chief engineer or chief engineer said the officialshirish sukhatme former president of peata practicing engineers architects and town planners associations said reducing the number of concessions to be given by the civic chief will not help muchthe 14 concessions which are still to be given by the commissioner are present in most proposals therefore files will again land at the commissioners desk meanwhile his juniors will also continue to take an excessively long time to give sanc tions sometimes it taken seven days to get just three signaturesalso despite stating that only for 14 concessions files would have to go to the municipal commissioner most of the parts in the dcr state that a certain thing can be done only with special permissions from the municipal commissioner said sukhatme pankaj joshi architect and executive directive of urban design research institute udri said the bmc commissioner should either have all discretionary powers or none ideally having discretionary powers disrupts equity as one person gets a different approval from the othertimes view if the delegation of power speeds up the tedious building approvals system it will iron out one of the most problematic issues facing the real estate industryconstruction proposal files are delayed in the bmc mainly for extraneous reasons and builders have frequently complained of large scale corruption the civic