GURUGRAM: The enforcement wing of department of town and country planning (DTCP) has served show cause notices to 30 residential units in upscale colonies for violating occupation certificate (OC) norms.
The property owners in licensed colonies like DLF 1 & 2, Sushant Lok 1 and South City carried out additional construction, built rooms in stilt parking areas and other structures in their buildings after obtaining OCs, officials said.
District town planner (enforcement wing) Manish Yadav said, “A notice has been issued to the property owners, asking them to reply in seven days. If the replies are unsatisfactory, the department will initiate action, including restoration orders, cancellation of occupation certificates and ban on registrations.”
The move came after the enforcement team of the department received complaints about illegal constructions on terraces, ground floors and balconies of some flats.
After receiving the complaints, Yadav inspected the spots and noticed rules of building plans being violated by residential owners. “After receiving occupation certificates, additional construction and alterations have been done in the houses by tampering the building plan originally submitted to procure the occupation certificate.”
Yadav said action will be taken as per provisions of Haryana Urban Development Act as unauthorised construction is a violation and a punishable offence.
On November 16, 2022, department of town and country planning handed architects the power to issue occupation certificates under the self-certification rules. After issuing occupation certificates, architects have to submit the files to the DTP’s (planning) office.
“According to the rules, 10% of the OC files submitted by architects can be randomly inspected by the department. If provisions have been made for future construction on any site after the occupation certificate has been granted, it is considered a violation of the norms. The architects should not issue occupation certificates to such buildings, as they will face action for the same,” Yadav said.
To make the process of issuance of OCs transparent, DTCP in February decided to carry out random inspections of the buildings who have procured the certificate.
For this, a software has been developed which is the DTCP portal.
Till now, 10% of OCs granted to properties by architects under the self-certification scheme have been randomly checked by the planning wing of DTCP, but the selection was done manually. DTCP chief Amit Khatri recently directed officials to select these cases through a software to make the process transparent.
If any wrongdoing is spotted while inspection, DTP scrutinises the selected file, inspects the building and uploads a detailed report along with photographs on the portal with comments to approve or reject the file.
