Mumbai: The Maharashtra government has taken up for implementation a much-delayed project to build a single-window system of obtaining clearances for film shoots at various locations — government as well as private — across the state.
Once the system is implemented, film-makers will get an approval on shoot requests within 15 working days.
The state information technology (IT) department has floated a tender to appoint a company to design, develop, commission, operate and maintain the single-window system. ThePrint has seen a copy of the tender documents.
“The proposal to have a single-window system for permissions to film in the state was first approved in 2015,” said an official from the department who did not wish to be named. “The state tourism department issued a government resolution in 2018 detailing what needs to be done to implement the proposal. We are now looking at developing the platform.”
Encouraging film shoots in Maharashtra, the official said, will not only make locations across the state more popular tourist spots, but will also help in ancillary gains such as income generation, investment and job creation focused around each location chosen.
“Maharashtra, particularly, is the country’s film-making hub, so we should make efforts towards bringing the administrative processes to film in the state on a par with those for international shooting destinations,” the official said.
IT department secretary Parag Jain did not respond to ThePrint’s calls and text message for comment.
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The single-window system
The plan to develop a single-window system was part of former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis’ policy to improve the ease of doing business in Maharashtra.
Officials from the state tourism and IT departments said that, beginning in 2015, they convened multiple meetings with representatives from the film industry, and learnt that the process of getting approvals to shoot in Maharashtra was quite cumbersome and time-consuming.
The idea behind the single-window system, they added, was to reduce the number of clearances as well as cut the red tape involved in securing these.
Accordingly, the state tourism department issued a government resolution in May 2018 to develop a web portal for a single-window system.
Since then, the state government has changed hands twice — when the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), comprising the undivided Shiv Sena, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress, came to power in November 2019, and in June last year, when Eknath Shinde rebelled with a clutch of Sena MLAs to form a government with the BJP.
According to the tender documents issued by the state IT department on 6 June, the single-window system will be developed in line with the specifications laid down in the May 2018 resolution.
The 2018 government resolution, a copy of which ThePrint has seen, suggests that producers of films, television serials, advertisements and documentaries should be able to first check if a particular location is available for shooting on their preferred dates.
If the location is available, the applicant will have to make a payment — the fees levied by stakeholder government organisations for that particular location and a deposit amount.
Once the payment is through, an order ID and date will be generated and the details of these will be made available to the stakeholder government organisations involved in giving clearances for the particular location, as well as to the Maharashtra Film Stage and Cultural Development Corporation (MFSCDC), on a dashboard.
The corporation, headquartered in Mumbai’s Film City at Goregaon, will be the nodal agency for the single-window system.
The developer will be required to create the web portal in five months and maintain it for a total of four years from the date of the work order, the tender documents say.
Approval in 15 days
IT department officials said the stakeholder government organisations involved in giving permissions at the location selected will have to either approve or reject the filming request in seven working days. If they do not respond within seven working days, their approval will be assumed.
Further, the corporation will have to coordinate with all stakeholder organisations and get the necessary clearances so as to give a final approval to the film-maker within 15 working days. Even if one stakeholder organisation doesn’t grant its ‘no objection’, the MFSCDC can reject the producer’s request.
If the request to shoot is rejected, the MFSCDC will have to refund the amount paid by the film-maker as well as the deposit, excluding the processing fee, within 15 working days, officials said. The applicant will be able to track their request in real time.
Moreover, according to the 2018 resolution, every government stakeholder agency should appoint one person as the coordinator for this single-window system at their end.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
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Source: The Print
