Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP).
Credit: DH File Photo
Bengaluru: The BBMP’s revenue officers plan to visit houses and commercial establishments over the next two months to geo-tag the property and digitise the records of every building.
They will also identify properties that have under-assessed the tax or those that do not come under its tax net. The exercise will also be a basis for rollout of various other services.
In the last few days, many residents have cited a message on their phones from the BBMP: "BBMP is creating digital property records for which BBMP staff will visit you in a few days. Please keep a copy of your property tax receipt and BESCOM bill ready to hand over to them. This is very necessary to correctly digitise your property.”
While a few felt it was genuine, others doubted it. Senior BBMP officials confirmed with DH that the message was sent by the BBMP to property owners as part of the digitisation exercise or what it calls the ‘Bhu-Aadhaar project’.
“During the visit, our staff will capture the GPS location and link latitude and longitude coordinates with the self-assessment scheme (SAS) number,” a senior BBMP official said.
By doing this, the BBMP, he said, will know the location of a property. “At the moment, we do not know where a property is located by looking at the property receipt.” This is part of centre’s Bhu-Aadhaar project, which has been renamed as 'Namma Swathu' locally.
Once the digitisation exercise is complete, the BBMP wants to integrate the database with different departments that provide a variety of land-related services. It is expected to come in handy at the time of approving layouts, acquiring land, issuing development rights certificates (DRC), etc.
During the spot inspection, revenue officers have also been told to look for any deviations in the self-assessment scheme (SAS). Prominent among them is to watch for residential buildings which have been turned into a paying guest (PG) or any other commercial establishments.