Shillong, Mar 7: The State government has constituted a committee for revisiting the Meghalaya Building Byelaws and suggest if amendment is required.
The decision was taken at a meeting chaired by the deputy chief minister in-charge district council affairs (DCA) Prestone Tynsong with the three autonomous district councils (ADCs) of Khasi, Jaintia and Garo Hills region in Shillong on Wednesday.
Also present were officials from the urban affairs department, revenue department and others.
Addressing media persons, Tynsong said that the State government in 2019 had already notified Meghalaya Urban Development Authority (MUDA) and three ADCs as authorized agencies to implement the building byelaws in the state.
According to him, the district councils will implement the byelaws outside the municipal board. However, few areas like industrial estates, the hotels and big institutions will still be done by the MUDA.
He said while discussing the issue, it was found out that a few more issues where it requires the government to again revisit the building byelaws. This was after the district councils wanted to implement the building byelaws in the entire Sixth Schedule areas irrespective of whether it is urban or rural.
“I personally feel that idea is very good where if building byelaws can be made applicable to every building and every citizen in the state nothing like it because the more we apply that the more the safety it will be for the entire state of Meghalaya specially the state being under high seismic zone where we have to be careful and be very sure that people are constructing their buildings safely,” Tynsong said.
“So we ultimately decided to have a committee something like a coordination or consultation committee to be headed by the secretary of urban affairs to study and revisit the byelaws we have today and also to see whether amendment of byelaws is required or not that also we have entrusted to this committee which is to be notified very soon,” he said while adding that the members of this committee will be from all three district councils besides officials of the urban affairs, revenue and other related departments.
