After introducing the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, the state government has also placed the onus of project approvals, carrying out inspections and granting occupation certificates for buildings on the architects of the projects, rather than the BMC.
While architects have questioned the decision, the move is aimed at ensuring quality construction and curbing corruption in the BMC's building proposal and development planning department. It is also in line with the government's push on ease of doing business.
In the existing scenario, acrhitects were only taking responsibility for the design of building projects, but did not bear any legal responsibility for quality of materials used for the building structure. To cut corners, and earn hefty profits, builders often use poor material and take a long time to hand over possession to the buyers. There have been frequent building collapse incidents in Mumbai due to inferior quality of construction.
Architects have said that there may be lapses while granting occupation certificates that are not malafide, and they should not be held liable for such genuine mistakes as they may not be well versed with all the clearances and norms involved. With greater liability on architects, however, they will now be compelled to scrutinise project plans carefully and apply their minds before putting their name on the architect's certificate. They will need to think twice before routinely clearing plans drawn up by junior architects. For the end user, the buyers, this will mean that a prominent architect's name attached to a project will carry actual weight rather than being just a gimmick.
