In a big relief to the builders and developers especially from South Central Mumbai, the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MCA) has finally notified amended rules pertaining to building height restrictions applicable to projects within radius of 20 km from Airport. This will help them to complete the projects which were stuck after the MCA in 2015 had come out with the Height Restrictions for Safeguarding of Aircraft Operations) Amendments Rules reducing the height.
In addition, the validity period of No Objection Certificates has been enhanced from overall period of 8 years to 12 years which gives relief to builders and developers especially from the South-Central Mumbai.
The MCA gazette notification said: “Restriction on building heights due to Automatic Dependence Surveillance- Broadcast (ADS- criteria has been relaxed. ADS-B height restriction is now applicable only up to radius of 2 km from ADS-B facility location from the earlier applicable radius of 20 km from ADS-B facility.”’
This will lead to substantial enhancement of building heights of projects in South-Central Mumbai region to pre-2015 levels. The building heights had got reduced inadvertently in the previous notification.
With the new gazette notification issued on December 18, the height of a 60-storey building, which was reduced to 40-storey has now been restored. This means the builder can complete the construction up to 60-storey as per the No Objection Certificate received from BMC. Realty players say there are many buildings in South Central Mumbai which were pending for completion following 2015 curbs but they can be completed soon.
The Builders’ Association of India Housing and RERA Committee chairman Anand Gupta told Free Press Journal the notification is a correction and it is in the right direction.’’ It will help the concerned builders to complete the projects and all the customers will be able to get their flats. This will also be a big relief to all financial institutions who have financed the builders & developers and also the home buyers,’’ he noted.
As per the notification, the restrictions on height of buildings in the funnel area remain unchanged. In these cases, the MVA has left it to the state government for rehabilitation of those buildings giving transfer of development rights. Approach funnel is a specified airspace around a nominal approach path within which an aircraft approaching to land is considered to make a normal approach.
There is a gradient for height restrictions on structures within a 20-km radius of runways to ensure safety of planes and residents. Within the funnel zone, the height of buildings depends on their distance from the runway end. The height of the buildings closest is capped at around 7m. Within the 4km radius zone, called the Inner Horizontal Surface, the maximum height of buildings prescribed under the Development Control regulations is 56.9m.
Further, the MCA has made revision to multi-radar criteria whereby only those structures which are situated beyond 2 km from each individual Radar can avail benefit of higher building height through integrated & operational Airport Surveillance Radar system.
