In a city, building approval is straightforward: there is a municipal corporation and it approves things. In rural Maharashtra, three different authorities can sanction a building depending on where the land sits and how large the development is, and which one applies changes what your approval is actually worth to you as a buyer. A sanction is not simply a sanction; its value depends on whether it came from the authority that genuinely had the power to give it, and a buyer who does not know which authority applies cannot judge whether the approval they have been shown is the real thing or a substitute for it.
The gram panchayat
The gram panchayat is the village-level authority, and for small construction on land within a village's jurisdiction it may issue the building permission and, later, the completion or occupancy record. This is a legitimate route, and a great deal of rural construction happens this way perfectly properly, so a panchayat permission is not in itself a warning sign. It is the appropriate authority for a certain scale of building in a certain kind of location, and where it genuinely had jurisdiction its permission is real. What a buyer must check is whether the panchayat actually had jurisdiction for the scale of what has been built, and whether the underlying land use permits the building at all. This is the crucial subtlety: a panchayat permission on land that was never converted from agricultural use does not fix the conversion problem, because the two are entirely separate questions. Building permission answers whether a structure was allowed; conversion answers whether the land may carry a non- agricultural use at all. Sellers sometimes present a panchayat permission as though it settled the conversion question, and it does not, so a buyer should confirm both independently rather than accepting one as an answer to the other.
The collector
The collector is the district authority, and the one that grants non-agricultural conversion. For many plots outside planning-authority limits, the collector's office also sanctions the layout and the building plans under the land revenue rules, and this is the route you will most often see on larger Ghats plots. When the same office that permitted the change of land use also approved the layout and the building, the records are consistent with one another by construction, which is a real advantage. A collector-sanctioned layout is, for a buyer, the strongest of the three, precisely because of that consistency. The office that decided the land could be used non- agriculturally is the same office that approved what sits on it, so the conversion and the building approval are aligned rather than issued by different authorities who might disagree. When you find a plot whose conversion and layout both came from the collector, matching the same survey or gat number, you are looking at the cleanest version of the approval picture, and it is worth recognising that as the reassurance it is.
Town planning
The question is not whether there is an approval. It is whether the approval came from the authority that had the power to give it. Where a plot falls within a regional plan area, a special planning authority or a municipal council's jurisdiction, the town planning department is the sanctioning authority, and the applicable development control rules then set the coverage, the height and the setbacks. Locations near a growing town can fall inside such an area even when they feel entirely rural, which catches buyers who assume that a plot that looks remote must be under the collector or the panchayat. The jurisdiction is a legal fact about where the plot sits, not an impression from how the surroundings look. This is worth checking specifically, because a plot within a planning authority's area is governed by that authority's rules, and an approval from the wrong body would not be valid. A buyer should confirm which authority actually has jurisdiction over the specific plot, rather than assuming from its rural feel, because the whole value of a sanction depends on it having come from the body with the power to grant it. A town- planning-area plot approved only by a panchayat, for instance, would have a serious problem hiding behind an approval that looks fine at a glance.
How to tell which one applies
Telling which authority applies is a matter of the plot's location and the scale of the development, and it is one of the first things to establish rather than assume. Ask the seller which authority sanctioned the plans, and ask to see the stamped drawing itself, because the sanction should be a physical, stamped document from a named authority rather than a claim. Then check that the survey or gat number on the sanction matches the 7/12 extract and the NA order exactly, because a sanction for a different parcel, or from an authority that does not cover that parcel, is the kind of problem that surfaces later at exactly the wrong moment. The mismatch to watch for is an approval from an authority that does not have jurisdiction over the plot, or a sanction whose numbers do not reconcile with the extract and the conversion order. These are the disagreements that emerge when a bank's lawyer reviews the file, usually weeks into a purchase and after money has moved, and they are far cheaper to catch at the start by simply confirming which authority applies and checking that its sanction matches the other documents. It is an afternoon's work to establish, and it is the kind of check that prevents a very expensive surprise.
Regularisation is a last resort, not a plan
Buyers sometimes encounter a house with a deviation from its sanction and are told, reassuringly, that it can be regularised. It is worth being sober about what that means. Regularisation, where it is available at all, is a process by which an authority may, under certain schemes and subject to charges and conditions, bring an unauthorised or deviated construction into compliance after the fact. It is not certain, it is not always available, and it is not something to buy on the expectation of, because a deviation that cannot be regularised is a deviation the buyer is left holding. The sound position is to treat a house that complies with its sanction as the norm and a house that needs regularisation as a problem whose resolution is uncertain and whose cost is the seller's to bear before you buy, not yours to gamble on after. A promise that a deviation can be regularised is a promise about a process the seller does not control, and the honest response is to require the compliance sorted, or the price adjusted for a real and quantified risk, before committing. Buying on the strength of a regularisation that has not yet happened is buying a problem dressed as a solution.
The gaothan and the village boundary
There is a category of village land worth knowing about, because it has its own rules and can confuse the jurisdiction question. The gaothan is the traditional settlement area of a village, and construction within it can be governed differently from land outside it, sometimes with the gram panchayat playing a larger role. A plot inside a gaothan and a plot on converted agricultural land outside it are governed by different frameworks, and a buyer should establish which applies rather than assuming the ordinary NA-and-collector pattern covers every case. This matters mainly because it affects which authority sanctions what and what documents you should expect to see. A knowledgeable buyer, or their lawyer, will establish whether a plot sits inside or outside the gaothan and what that implies for the approvals, rather than being surprised by an unfamiliar document trail. It is another instance of the general rule that the value of any approval depends on it coming from the authority with jurisdiction, and that jurisdiction is a legal fact about the specific plot that repays checking rather than assuming.
A practical sequence for checking
Reduced to a sequence, the check runs like this. First, establish where the plot sits: inside a municipal or planning-authority area, inside a gaothan, or on converted agricultural land outside both, because that determines which authority should have sanctioned it. Second, ask which authority actually did sanction the plans, and obtain the stamped drawing. Third, reconcile the survey or gat number on that sanction against the 7/12 extract and the NA order, confirming all three describe the same parcel. Fourth, confirm the sanction came from the authority that genuinely had jurisdiction over that plot. Fifth and last, separate the question of approval from the question of compliance, and ask for the occupancy certificate to confirm the finished building matches what was sanctioned. Walking that sequence, in order, is an afternoon's work with your lawyer, and it settles the whole question of who sanctioned what and whether the sanction is worth anything. It is far cheaper done at the start than discovered weeks into a purchase when a bank's lawyer reaches the same questions and finds they were never answered.
Keep the sanction with the rest of the file
A closing practical habit: the stamped sanction belongs in the same permanent file as the title, the 7/12 extract, the NA order and the certificates, because you will need it again more than once. A lender's technical valuer will ask for it. Your insurer may want it. A future buyer's lawyer will certainly reconcile it against the extract exactly as your own should have. A sanction that is filed and kept is a document produced in minutes when it is needed; a sanction that was glanced at once and mislaid is a scramble at exactly the wrong moment. Treating the sanction as part of the permanent legal record of the house, rather than as a formality checked once at purchase, is a small discipline with a long payoff. It is the same principle that runs through all of the buying diligence: the documents that prove a house is sound are not one-time hurdles but a permanent asset attached to the property, and keeping them complete and together protects the value of the house across every transaction it will ever be part of.
Approval is not compliance
There is a further distinction that is the source of a great deal of confusion, and it holds regardless of which authority granted the sanction. An approval from any of the three authorities tells you that a building was permitted. It does not tell you that the building actually complies with what was permitted. Those are separate questions, answered by separate documents, the second being the occupancy certificate, and a seller who answers the compliance question by producing the sanction is not answering it. A house can hold a valid sanction and still have been built with deviations from it: an extra room, an enclosed terrace, coverage beyond what was approved. The sanction proves that a compliant building was allowed; only the occupancy certificate, issued after inspection, confirms that the building as actually completed matches what was approved. A buyer who accepts the sanction as proof that the finished house is compliant has conflated permission with compliance, and it is exactly the gap through which a house that was approved but built differently gets sold without the discrepancy being noticed.
Why this shows up in listings
Because the sanctioning authority genuinely matters to what an approval is worth, it deserves to be treated as a fact about a property rather than as background. Every Eko Estates listing records its sanctioning authority as a field rather than a footnote, alongside the NA status and the certificates, so that a buyer can see which route a project took before they even ask. That is deliberate: which authority sanctioned a building is not a technicality to be produced on request, it is a primary fact about the property that a serious buyer will want to know from the outset. Recording it openly also reflects the honest position, which is that a collector- sanctioned layout on cleanly converted land, with the numbers matching across the extract, the conversion order and the plan, is the strongest version of the approval picture and the one a careful buyer should look for. Ask which authority sanctioned the plans, ask to see the stamped drawing, check the numbers reconcile, and remember that even a valid sanction proves only that a building was permitted, not that the finished house complies with it. Get all of that straight, and the question of who sanctioned what stops being a source of confusion and becomes one more thing you have actually confirmed.