Articles by News Desk

The handover process with all its financial, operational and technical aspects can be hard to nail down. Yet, it is the most pressing challenge as an association prepares to run the affairs of a community. Issues like late handover and defects within the apartment are common complaints of most individual apartment owners taking possession of their new property. At an association level, however, issues are even more complex and often ignored. The issues range from major defects, incomplete construction, lack of documentation, improper handover of maintenance corpus etc. In a new apartment, a freshly constituted Association’s Managing Committees (MC) may…

Onti Mane housing scheme to be restarted by BBMP Karnataka CM Basavaraj Bommai announced on June 15th that BBMP would restart the Onti Mane scheme, which aims to provide financial assistance to the poor to build a house, if they owned a site. This will be in conjunction with other urban development schemes such as Akrama Sakrama, which regularises revenue collection in pockets of the city where a large number of underprivileged people in Bengaluru live.  The Onti Mane scheme offers upto Rs 5 lakh to people belonging to the SC/ST/OBC and minority categories to build houses in their plots.…

Chennai Metro Phase 2 progress and accessibility promise The elevated metro line between Porur and Poonamalle as part of Phase 2 will have a total of 453 pillars. Of this, 111 pillars have already been erected as part of the progress on this line. The total cost of the elevated line is estimated to be Rs 1147 crore. The line is set to be open and operational from June 2023. This line will extend from Lighthouse to Poonamallee and is part of Corridor 3. The total length of all lines in Phase 2 is 118.9 km. The review is on…

Mahim Church in Mumbai aims to go carbon neutral within 2 years St. Michael Church in Mahim, one of Mumbai's oldest churches aims to go carbon neutral within the next two years, a decision in line with Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's (BMC) Mumbai Climate Action Plan (MCAP). A greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions inventory analysis was conducted to accurately assess how they can cut back on emissions.  According to environmental engineer Emmanuel D’Silva, Mahim church emitted a total of 44 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2eq) emissions in 2021, which can be taken as its annual baseline. “Not surprisingly, electricity consumption was the…

Lakhs of litres of water in Mumbai extracted without NOC According to documents obtained by groundwater activist Sureshkumar Dhoka, through RTI, major infrastructure and redevelopment projects in the city were extracting lakhs of litres of water daily without a No Objection Certificate (NOC). The documents outline that, until now, the Central Government Authority (CGWA) has not extended powers to any state agency to issue NOCs to well and tank owners and fine them in case of breach of law. As per guidelines to obtain a NOC for extraction of water, a well or tank owner must have ownership of about 200 square…

Lokayukta appointment soon Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai confirmed that the process of appointing the new Lokayukta is in the final stages. Bommai's confirmation comes a day after the High Court, during a hearing, indicated that the appointment process had begun. The panel formed to choose the Lokayukta comprises Bommai, High Court Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi, Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, Chairman of the Legislative Council, and opposition leaders in both Houses. The position of Lokayukta has been vacant since January. Source: The Indian Express Idgah Maidan row The row over the ownership of the Chamarajpet Idgah Maidan has heated…

Flood mitigation works in Chennai to conclude by September The Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) has set a deadline of September 30 to conclude all stormwater drain works in the city. The civic body aims to finish construction and repair works before the onset of the northeast monsoon. A circular on the matter has been issued by Commissioner Gagandeep Singh Bedi. The circular called for the completion of the work per set norms.  The instructions from the civic body also stated that the assistant executive engineer, executive engineer and assistant engineer will be held responsible for any stagnation of water in…

Huge spike in COVID cases, testing to be ramped in Mumbai On June 3rd, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) announced that the positivity rate in Mumbai for COVID cases touched six per cent. "Daily new cases have tremendously increased in Mumbai, with monsoon around the corner, we will now see a rapid rise in symptomatic cases," the civic body said. Vaccination for ages 12-18 and administration of the booster dose has been pushed aggressively, as the BMC predicts a rise in symptomatic cases with the monsoons just around the corner. On June 2nd, the city recorded 506 COVID cases, the…

BBMP ward delimitation report to be out in a week BBMP has submitted the ward delimitation report to the State's Urban Development Department. With delimitation, the number of wards in BBMP has been increased from 198 to 243. The report, which specifies the boundaries of the new wards, will be made public in a week. There are now more wards in the Assembly Constituencies in outer areas. Constituencies that have got the most number of wards are Bengaluru South (up from five to 13 wards), Bommanahalli (from six to 14), Byatarayanapura (from four to 11), RR Nagar (from four to…

Chennai suburbs to see basic street rate reduction The Greater Chennai Corporation council passed a resolution to reduce the basic street rate (BSR) component of property tax calculation for some suburban areas of Chennai. The BSR component will now be equal to or less than that of the core areas. Previously, the BSR component of the suburban areas was higher than some of the core areas, prompting protests by residents.  Residents of Alandur, Valsaravakkam, Ambattur, Thiruvottiyur and Madhavaram saw high BSR after the latest round of property tax revision whereby the rates were set higher than Nungambakkam and T Nagar.…