Ganpati mandals in Mumbai want approval process to go online, BMC says no

The committee will now meet mayor Vishwanath Mahadeshwar to demand a better single-window clearance system.

With a month to go for the 10-day Ganeshotsav, a Ganesh mandal coordination committee in the city has asked the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to take the process to get permission to setup pandals online.  

A man paints a Ganesha's idol at Bandra in Mumbai.(Shashi S Kashyap/HT)

After the Bombay high court issued a directive against structures encroaching public roads, the civic body had drafted rules for pandals in 2015 to ensure pedestrians do not face any inconvenience during the festival. 

 As per this policy, the BMC had made it compulsory for all pandals to get approvals from the police, traffic and fire departments. To improve the application-approval rate, the civic body had introduced single-window clearance in all the 24 wards. 

The Brihanmumbai Sarvajanik Ganeshutsav Samanvay Samiti (BSGSS) pointed out that the single-window clearance system was slow and failed to improve the approval rate, which is why the BMC should start accepting applications online. The committee had met BMC and traffic police department earlier this month to put forth their demands.

“The authorities promised that single-window clearance system will help in quicker approvals or rejections and there will be better coordination between the departments, which was absent last year,” said Naresh Dahibhavkar, president, BSGSS.  

The committee will now meet mayor Vishwanath Mahadeshwar to demand a better single-window clearance system. 

However, BMC officials said they have no plans to move the system online and all the mandals will have to go to ward offices to submit their applications. The civic official added that though there are more than 11,000 mandals across the city, only 20% of them seek permission to erect pandals during Ganeshotsav.

The nine-page circular of the BMC policy was issued to all 24 administrative wards by civic chief Ajoy Mehta, last year, after the HC order.  It requires organisers to submit a location map with the sketch of the pandal mentioning its length, width and height.