The Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) has decided to relax the restrictions in the height of buildings to facilitate construction of buildings with higher ceiling, better ventilation, improved aesthetics and better use of technology.

“The CMDA has made a decision to increase the floor height to 3.5 metres. The government has to make a final decision on amending the development regulations. The decision is expected shortly,” said a CMDA official.

Currently, the planning authorities permit higher ceiling only for multi-storied and special buildings, while other buildings such as institutions and industries are unable to build rooms with higher ceilings if they are not categorised as multi-storied buildings or special buildings.

“Owing to the restrictions in height, the height from floor to a ceiling cannot be more than 2.95 metres now. After the amendment of the development regulations, the height can go up to 3.5 metres, offering better ventilation,” said the official.

As per the existing provisions of the development regulations in Chennai Metropolitan Area, if the height of a building measured from the ground level is 15.25 metres, such building will not be considered a multi-storied building.

Multi-storied buildings are those exceeding four floors with at least 15.25 metres in height. Once the amendments come, buildings with a height of 17 metres would be classified as institutional buildings or industrial buildings. In case of hospitals, however, buildings not exceeding four floors with a height of 17 metres are already classified as non multi-storied buildings.

Invaluable documents relating to data on births and deaths in the Chennai Corporation region were damaged after they were shifted to another location in Ripon Buildings.

On Tuesday, labourers hurriedly shifted the records that were stacked up in neat piles, reducing them to a disorderly heaps of paper haphazardly placed one on top of the other.

In the process, many files were damaged, papers were torn and records lost.

According to sources in the Chennai Corporation, the existing records were shifted to facilitate the renovation of the building.

“Some officials decided to shift the records to another building, but the new location was not suited for the preservation of the documents. Also, the labourers shifted the documents without proper supervision,” said an official of the Corporation.

While a portion of the birth and death records are housed in zonal offices of the civic body, most of the records have been preserved in Ripon Buildings.

Previous damage

As much as 5% of the 2,600 books in the birth and death department were already damaged earlier, affecting the scanning of the documents for digitisation, the work for which started in 2015.

The digitisation work is almost complete and the checking of the quality of the scanned documents is under way. If the scanned copies are found blurred, the officials will have to repeat the process.

If the data in the documents damaged on Tuesday has not been properly recorded during the scanning, it could be lost forever, officials said.

Officials of the Corporation said the checking of the quality of the digitisation of birth and death records will be completed in one month. At least 20 lakh pages have been scanned.

“Even after digitisation, we will preserve the books in the birth and death department. Physical records are always the most reliable,” said an official.