Faster building clearances: ‘BuildNow’ rolled out across HMDA region

Hyderabad: Within two months after its launch, ‘BuildNow’, a new unified building and layout approval system, will now cover the entire Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) region.

Until this week, the speedy online processing of building and layout approval mechanism was only available for builders and flat buyers in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) limits.

According to MAUD Principal Secretary M Dana Kishore, the AI-powered ‘BuildNow’ online building approval system has been a huge help for the applicants in the Greater Hyderabad region and the government wants to make this quicker approval system available to more residents.

With this expansion, ‘BuildNow’ will now consider construction project approvals from areas including Future City and surrounding villages. The administration is planning to expand it further into the Directorate of Town and Country Planning (DTCP) areas next week.

Earlier this year, the Congress government unveiled ‘BuildNow’, a rapid online system for building and layout approvals replacing TG-bPASS. Under the previous system, applicants had to navigate multiple platforms for applications such as submissions, status tracking, fee payments and there were delays in getting results. The new approval mechanism has reduced the processing time of building scrutiny, which would take 2 to 30 days, to under 5 minutes.

After the successful implementation of ‘BuildNow’ approvals are now being issued within 30 seconds. Recently, the AI-powered system, which works without human intervention, has approved a 26-floor high-rise project, including six towers and an amenity block totalling over 2 lakh sq. m, within 71 seconds. So far, over 500 applications have been processed within GHMC limits.