PATNA, Nov. 3 -- Bihar is ready with the draft Building Bye-laws 2026 to alter the existing laws to regulate constructions in urban landscape, said official in the urban development and housing department. The new regulations aim to dismantle bureaucratic bottlenecks, introduce widespread self-certification, and relax existing vertical height caps to facilitate modern development, added said. The draft building bye-laws are in the final stages of government approval, officials added. Once enacted, they will overhaul traditional zoning mechanisms to accelerate infrastructure development across municipal corporations, councils, nagar panchayats, and metropolitan planning jurisdictions statewide. One of the major highlights of draft, a copy of which HT accessed, is proposed policy shift for an aggressive deregulation of spatial and volumetric restrictions. Overturning decades of rigid planning caps, one of the proposed by law is considering to give more relaxation on maximum building height for all permissible activities in all land use zones. Similarly, the state is also keen on removing arbitrary ceilings on structural density; another proposed bye-law has provisioned that there could be more relaxation on upper ceiling or maximum restriction on the Floor Area Ratio (FAR) permissible on a plot, establishing an across-the-board base FAR of 3.5. There is also new regulations proposed for provisioning of setbacks on any building with various new parameters to be applied. The new rules are aimed at ensuring that new construction plans get faster approval on the basis of tweaked parameters with new buildings having adequate space as setbacks proportion to their heights so that diaster response vehicles can enter the buildings easily, officials aware of the matter said. Administrative clearances have undergone an equally sweeping revamp designed to fast-track approvals. To bypass municipal delay, another proposed bye-law 4(d) establishes a strict statutory guillotine, declaring that where an application "is not approved or rejected within 30 days, then the building plan shall be deemed to have been approved". For low-risk projects, regulatory intervention has been replaced by professional autonomy as the draft by-law 5(2), where eligible structures "shall not be required to take the approval of their building plans". Enacted under Bye-law 35(1) to repeal the outdated 2014 framework, the draft bye-laws forge a high-density, investor-friendly skyline anchored firmly by strict technical accountability....