Who Is Liable If a Sanctioned Plan Is Rejected? Architect vs Owner

A sanctioned plan getting rejected sounds like a contradiction, and that is exactly why the question comes up so often in New Town, Salt Lake and the older KMC wards, because in practice there are three different moments people casually call "rejection" and each one sits with a different person. There is the plan that never gets sanctioned in the first place and comes back with objections, there is the sanction that is granted and then challenged or revoked later because something in the submission does not hold up, and there is the building that is sanctioned on paper but built differently on site, so the completion or occupancy stage is where it falls apart. Liability lands very differently in those three cases, and the owner who has not thought about it in advance is usually the one absorbing the cost.

We run an architecture and interior design practice out of New Town, and since 2014 we have delivered over 330 buildings across New Town, Salt Lake, Rajarhat and greater Kolkata, so this is not a theoretical question for us. Our principal architect Sumana Kumar takes residential and commercial projects through NKDA, KMC and Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation sanction processes as a routine part of the job, and the pattern we see repeat is that owners assume the architect carries every risk the moment a drawing is signed, while architects assume the owner carries every risk that flows from the land documents, and the gap between those two assumptions is where the actual loss sits.

So let us take this apart properly, because knowing where the line falls is what lets you write a sensible agreement before the drawings even start, rather than arguing about it eighteen months later with a half-built structure on your plot.

The three things people mean by "rejected", and why the difference matters

When a plan comes back from the sanctioning authority with objections at the scrutiny stage, that is not a rejection in the damaging sense, that is the normal working rhythm of a submission, and any architect who tells you their drawings never attract a single query is either very new or not being straight with you. Objections about a dimension, a missing signature on a document, a clarification on the setback at a particular edge, these get answered and resubmitted, and the cost is time rather than money. We build that round into the schedule from day one, and if you want the full sequence laid out, our guide to the NKDA building plan sanction process walks through it stage by stage.

The second case is the one that actually hurts, which is a sanction that is granted and then set aside, and the usual root cause there is not a drafting mistake at all, it is a defect in what was declared. Ownership documents that do not reconcile, a plot boundary that does not match the physical extent, a land use that does not support what was proposed, an encroachment or an easement that nobody disclosed. The catch here is that the architect certifies the design against the applicable building code and rules, but the architect does not and cannot certify that you own what you say you own, so a sanction obtained on a defective title is an owner problem, and no clause in an appointment letter will move it.

The third case is deviation. The plan was sanctioned, correctly, and then the building went up differently, so the completion and occupancy certificate stage is where the authority notices that the built form and the sanctioned form are not the same thing. This is where liability genuinely splits three ways between owner, architect and contractor, and it is the case worth spending the most time on before you start.

Where the design itself is the architect's liability, plainly

If a plan is refused because the design does not comply with the rules that were in force at submission, that is squarely the architect's professional responsibility, and there is no honest way to spread it around. Getting floor area ratio wrong for the plot category, taking a setback that the rules do not permit at that plot width, exceeding the height band applicable to the road frontage, misreading how coverage is computed for a projection, these are technical calls the owner hired the architect to make, and if they are wrong the architect corrects them and resubmits at their own cost.

What we do in our residential architecture work to keep this from ever becoming a live question is to run the envelope arithmetic before the client falls in love with a plan, so the massing they approve is already inside what the rules permit rather than a hopeful sketch that has to be shrunk later. That sequencing matters more than people expect, because the expensive version of this problem is not a rejection, it is an owner who has emotionally committed to a layout that was never buildable, and now every compliant alternative feels like a downgrade. We use 3D visualisation at that same early stage for exactly this reason, so the thing you are approving is the thing that can actually be sanctioned and built.

Where it is the owner's liability, even when it feels unfair

Title, mutation and possession sit with the owner, and this is the single biggest source of sanctions that unravel later. If the recorded owner is not the person applying, if a co-sharer has not consented, if the mutation was never completed, if the plot on the ground is not the plot in the deed, the sanction obtained on that basis is fragile and the loss is yours. Our guide on documents required for NKDA building sanction exists because we would rather clients discover a document gap in week one than in month nine.

The second owner liability is instructed change. An owner who asks the contractor to push a wall out, enclose a balcony, add a room on the terrace, or convert stilt parking into usable space after sanction has authored a deviation, and the fact that the change was verbal and casual does not soften it. The whole reason we insist on putting deviation warnings in writing is that when the occupancy stage arrives, a written record is what separates a documented instruction from a vague dispute about who suggested what. If you want to see how ugly that stage gets, our piece on why occupancy certificates get rejected is a fairly unsentimental list.

The third one is fees and timelines. Statutory payments, renewals and validity windows are owner obligations, and a sanction that lapses because a payment was not made is not a professional failure by anyone.

The contractor is the third party nobody puts in the agreement

On a large share of the deviation cases we get called into, the owner did not instruct the change and the architect did not draw it, the contractor simply built what was convenient. A column shifted because of a service line, a slab poured slightly beyond the line, a shaft closed up because it was faster, a mumty enlarged because the labour on site thought it looked better. None of that is malice, it is just what happens when the site works from an old print and nobody is checking against the sanctioned set.

So the practical protection is not a stronger indemnity clause, it is a supervision arrangement where somebody with the drawings in hand is physically checking the setting out, the levels and the projections at the stages where a mistake becomes permanent rather than correctable. This is one honest argument for engaging an architect for site supervision and not only for drawings, and it is also why the choice between an architect and an empanelled engineer for your submission is worth understanding properly, which we covered in architect vs empanelled engineer for NKDA work.

The renovation case, which trips up more owners than new build

Renovations and additions on already-sanctioned buildings are where liability gets muddiest, because the owner often assumes that interior work needs no permission and therefore carries no risk. Repainting and refitting are one thing, but enclosing a balcony, changing a structural element, adding a floor, altering the parking layout or extending a footprint are all changes to the sanctioned position, and if the original sanction is later examined those changes are attributed to the current owner regardless of who did the work or when.

We see this most often in Salt Lake style older plots and in early New Town handovers where a previous owner made changes and the current owner inherited them without knowing. Before we take on renovation and remodelling work, we compare what is standing against what was sanctioned, because that comparison decides whether the job is a straightforward interior scope or a regularisation problem wearing an interior scope costume. Our note on why building plans get rejected covers several of these inherited-deviation patterns, and the DE Block residence in New Town is a reasonable example of how a compliant envelope and an interior brief can be resolved together rather than sequentially.

What a sensible owner actually does about all this

At the end of the day the useful move is not to hunt for the agreement that shifts maximum blame onto the architect, because an architect who has accepted unlimited liability for things outside their control has usually priced that fear into the fee, and you pay for it either way. The better move is to remove the causes. Verify title before drawings, insist on seeing the compliance arithmetic, keep the sanctioned set live on site, and put every change request in writing so that nobody is reconstructing intentions from memory a year later.

Basically, the architect owns the design and its compliance, the owner owns the land, the documents and the decisions, and the contractor owns faithful execution, and when those three are clearly assigned in advance the whole liability question stops being frightening and becomes ordinary project administration. If you are at the stage of buying a plot, hiring for a new build, or trying to work out whether something already standing on your property is going to cause trouble at occupancy, we are happy to look at your documents and drawings and tell you plainly where you stand, so get in touch with our studio and we will take it from there.