The main features of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi's (MCD) new byelaws for the city of nearly 15 million people would include national building code provisions and clear-cut procedures.

"The new byelaws will correct earlier loopholes and faults and for this an outside expert too has been roped in," M.M. Das, superintending engineer, MCD, told IANS.

"The draft of the new bylaws should be ready by June 15 or 16 and we hope to put it into practice by January next year," Das said.

The key inadequacies of the existing byelaws of the 1,483 sq km city were that they were outdated, unclear, did not address many important environmental and social issues, he said.

With a density of 9,294 people per sq km, Delhi's infrastructure has been severely overburdened.

According to officials in another 15 years, there will be no more area left in the capital for urbanisation and at the rate the city is growing features like water harvesting have to be made mandatory for the city's buildings.

"One of the main features of the new byelaws would be the simplification in the laws relating to residential buildings, which would require the approval of just the architect," Das said.

Unlike now, where the plan has to be approved by the architect as well as the MCD, it will be a much simpler task with the new byelaws in place.

The local area plan that looks into the implementation of Masterplan 2021 - a visionary draft plan to make Delhi a global metropolis and a world-class city by 2021 - will use each city ward as its base for defining the planning provisions.

Out of the 134 wards in Delhi five wards - Vasant Vihar, Karol Bagh, Sangam Vihar, Yusuf Sarai and walled city - have been taken up as a pilot project to test the new bylaws.

Officials said the new laws would be a major step in reforming the system of giving building permits, completion certificates, local area planning and regulation of the players in the development of the city.

MCD has roped in an Ahmedabad-based architect to work out the modalities of the byelaws.

"The present set of byelaws were put in place in 1983. Though modifications have been made as and when necessary, there has been no comprehensive review for a long time," Das said.