Applicants suffer as LDA’s online building plan system shut for 10 days

LAHORE:Hundreds of citizens were facing serious inconvenience after the LDA’s online building plan approval system collapsed for the second time during the past several months.

LDA sources said the system of online building plan approval has been shut down for the last 10 days due to which no maps are being processed while the already uploaded files are not accessible.

Chief Minister Punjab Maryam Nawaz directed the LDA’s senior management to introduce systems for public convenience, which the management did, but the system faced continuous changes and malfunction.

The Lahore Development Authority’s (LDA) much-publicised online building plan approval system has once again come to a halt, marking its second major failure since launch. The IT department, tasked with developing and maintaining the software, has failed to establish a robust and reliable system, raising serious concerns about its technical capabilities.

The first breakdown occurred merely two months after the system’s initial rollout. That incident caused a complete suspension of plan approvals for at least two weeks. When the system was eventually restored, a critical failure resulted in the loss of all previously submitted and approved files, sources said.

LDA sources added that the disappearance of records has made verification of earlier approvals impossible, leading to administrative chaos and public distrust. After resuming operations, the system managed to function for nearly three months before collapsing again. For the past 10 days, all online submissions and approvals have been suspended, leaving the public in limbo, sources maintained and added that the sudden and prolonged outage was causing widespread inconvenience, particularly to those awaiting urgent approvals. This second failure highlights the IT department’s inability to meet the expectations of the LDA and undermines the vision of the Chief Minister Punjab’s digital governance initiative. Urgent remedial actions and accountability measures were now being demanded by stakeholders to restore confidence and ensure uninterrupted public service delivery.

Saleem, a resident of a private society, said he was coming to LDA’s One Window Cell for the last three days and after a wait of several hours he was told to come the next day as the system was down.

Many other citizens who were refused services due to malfunction of the system, termed it an incapability of LDA’s IT section and asked the DG LDA Tahir Farooq to look into the matter and take action against all the ineligible IT officers for the inconvenience of the public.

When contacted, LDA’s IT Head Basit said the online building plan approval system was not collapsed but was closed due to necessary security upgradation. He said manual entries were being made in the system and there was no refusal.

To a question about the loss of previously uploaded files, he said no data was lost and LDA has all the record. He said the system was almost fixed and will be back online on Thursday (today).