NEW DELHI: The government will conclude the process of streamlining approvals for construction projects in urban areas by the end of this year. This was decided today at an inter-ministerial meeting chaired by the minister of urban development and housing and urban poverty alleviation M Venkaiah Naidu The meeting was also attended by the minister of culture and tourism Dr Mahesh Sharma along with secretaries and senior officials of eight different ministries and departments.Naidu reviewed the progress made by various ministries and departments to enhance the ‘ease of doing business’ in respect of construction and housing projects in urban areas in the context of implementation of new urban sector initiatives like Housing for All, Smart City Mission and Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation ( AMRUT ). It was decided in the meeting that the ongoing efforts in this regard will be completed and necessary notifications issued by the end of this year so that urban local bodies can give approvals for construction projects in a specified time period.After the decision of the ministry of environment, forests and climate change to delegate powers of according required approvals to urban local bodies, it was decided that a workshop will be held to inform states and urban local bodies on the modalities of using the delegated powers. Here, other ministries will also explain the initiatives being taken to streamline the approvals.Naidu urged the ministry of environment to come out with a simplified check list for ensuring compliance by urban local bodies.The ministry of civil aviation has recently uploaded the Colour Coded Zoning Maps of Ahmedabad and Lucknow airports on the website of Airports Authority of India. It had earlier uploaded maps of airports at Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Kolkata and would add Guwahati, Bengaluru , Chennai, Nagpur and Jaipur by the end of this year. Such uploading of Colour Coded Zoning Maps would enable urban local bodies accord approvals without the applicants going to the ministry of civil aviation, reducing the overall time take to give final approvals.Officials of the civil aviation ministry will soon hold talks with the defence ministry to resolve the issue of uploading Zoning Maps in respect of 25 defence airports.Ministry of culture has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with ISRO for survey and mapping of all the 3,686 protected monuments in the country for uploading and enabling online approvals.Ministry of Consumer Affairs will come out with National Building Code-2015 keeping in view with the objective of enhancing the ease of doing business in urban areas.