Tamil Nadu Minister B Rajkumar announced a set of departmental initiatives to reform urban housing, building approvals and relief for housing allottees during a debate on demands for grants in the state Assembly. He said the Directorate of Town and Country Planning would digitise the land-use change application process and expand self-certification to residential buildings of up to 5,000 sq ft and small commercial buildings of up to 1,500 sq ft. Third-party certification will be introduced for commercial buildings of up to 3,230 sq ft, residential buildings of up to 8,070 sq ft and industrial structures of up to 26,900 sq ft in approved SIDCO, SIPCOT and ELCOT layouts.

Local body approval limits for residential projects will be raised to 16,140 sq ft for corporations and municipalities and 12,912 sq ft for town and village panchayats, while commercial approval limits for all local bodies will increase to 5,380 sq ft. He said procedures for reclassifying wet agricultural land in non-planned areas would be streamlined through multi-departmental clearances to speed up development and reduce procedural delays.

The Tamil Nadu Urban Habitat Development Board plans to reconstruct 12,648 dilapidated flats across 20 project areas at a cost of Rs 28,826.2 million (mn), with demolition of 9,918 unsafe units to be taken up first. The board will also spend Rs 966.3 mn to renovate 41,664 old flats and allocate Rs 3,550 mn to upgrade civic infrastructure across 208 housing sites. An integrated Smart Habitat Management Platform will be launched at a cost of Rs 7.5 mn.

For primary cooperative housing societies the minister outlined a broad interest waiver scheme to benefit borrowers who have defaulted and said Low Income Group and Middle Income Group borrowers would receive an additional one percentage point interest waiver. He said the measures were intended to accelerate approvals, improve urban housing stock and provide financial relief to vulnerable borrowers while strengthening digital governance in urban planning.