TNEB confused over what constitutes special buildings

C Shivakumar

Chennai:
Does a building with two floors fall under the category of special building or the one having more than four floors! This is the confusion plaguing Tamil Nadu Electricity Board in giving power connection to the special buildings.

Sources said that Tamil Nadu Electricity Board is insisting for completion certificate only for those buildings, which has a total of four floors (Ground Floor plus Three floors) and those having less than four floors are termed as ordinary buildings.

Interestingly, a residential or commercial building with more than two floors is considered as a special building as per the definition under development regulation of Second Master Plan for Chennai Metropolitan Area.

This comes in the wake of High Court passing orders on Building Regularisation Scheme stating that to avoid future violations building should be certified as constructed in compliance of planning permit and power and water connection should be contingent on such certificate.

Sources said following the HC order, Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority has introduced a system of issuing completion certificate as a pre-requisite for obtaining power supply, water supply and sewer connections. The completion certificate has to be insisted by TNEB for special building and multi-storied buildings where in CMDA is issuing planning permission and it is not applicable for ordinary buildings.

Now following the confusion, it is felt many special buildings could have escaped the purview of TNEB. The issue was also highlighted during the sub-committee meeting of the monitoring committee recently to decide on the imposition of heavy penalties against the erring builders. The officials felt that TNEB is having a different definition of special buildings.

What is a special Building:

n      A residential or commercial building with more than two floors

n      A residential building with more than six dwelling units

n      A commercial building exceeding a floor area of 300 square metres