Gandhinagar: The Gujarat govt has decided to introduce procedural reforms across multiple departments to improve Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) in line with the Centre’s plan. The Centre’s Deregulation Cell has asked states to implement reforms to reduce the regulatory burden. A detailed presentation in this regard was made in the state cabinet meeting on Wednesday. Sources said Gujarat will cut compliance requirements in departments including education, energy and petrochemicals, food, civil supplies and consumer affairs, industries and mines, labour and employment, revenue, and urban development and urban housing.Senior officials said some changes are expected by April, with the entire exercise to be completed by June. For the Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC), recommendations include optimising land use in existing and upcoming industrial clusters and creating provisions for MSMEs. “Proposed measures include revisiting the industrial area allotment policy, enabling land parcel pooling and splitting, allowing mortgages, permitting land-use changes with change of business, converting leasehold to freehold, and providing flexibility to sublease, transfer, sell, or reassign industrial plots, including transfers to joint ventures and subsidiaries,” a source said. Recommendations also include permitting low-cost and EWS housing within industrial areas. In the education department, recommendations include removing the essentiality certificate, reducing other certification requirements for private schools, and revising land requirement criteria. For the energy and petrochemicals department, recommendations include speeding up the release of electricity connections for residents and businesses and removing the requirement of field inspections for power connections. For the industries and mines department, proposed reforms include compiling a list of testing facilities in state institutions for MSME access and removing double licensing for MSMEs. Sources said the govt is also considering amending municipal or other applicable laws to remove dual licensing for similar compliance requirements, including licences for spas, police clearances, signage, salons, social functions, peg measures, swimming-pool NOCs, discotheque NOCs, and liquor. The reforms also propose designating a single nodal agency within the state IPA/IPB for pre-establishment, construction, connection, and operational approvals within notified industrial areas and parks. States have also been advised to expand self-certification and declaration-based approvals and inspections, including consent to establish (CTE) and consent to operate (CTO) for white and green-category industries, sanitation certificates, and verification and stamping of low-risk commercial weights-and-measures instruments.
