Move over touts: AI to help citizens draft property documents in Karnataka

'The [Karnataka] government is on to tap into AI to deliver better governance,' Gowda said at a roundtable with corporates at the Bengaluru Tech Summit.

Bengaluru: Karnataka is rolling out an Artificial Intelligence-based system that citizens can use to generate various property-related documents such as agreements and deeds by themselves without having to depend on middlemen, Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda said on Thursday.

"The government is on to tap into AI to deliver better governance," Gowda said at a roundtable with corporates at the Bengaluru Tech Summit.

"We are now going to roll out an AI module where people can just plug in basic details of a land transaction...if they want to rent a property, they can just plug in basic details and the system will generate a document for them using AI. This is a very low-end AI that we're starting with," Gowda said.

"People today have to resort to intermediaries to (draft) basic registration documents like rental agreements and lease agreements. However, with AI, these can be generated by citizens themselves. We'll roll out this module maximum in another month," Gowda said.

According to Gowda, his department will deploy "very shortly" a similar AI-based tool to plug huge annual pilferage in stamp duties on property transactions.

"In a year, I suspect that I can prevent underpayment of stamp duties to the extent of Rs 500-1,000 crore. That's the extent to which people are abusing me because I don't have simple tools to tell them that they're taking me for a ride," Gowda said.

According to Gowda, his department loses out on stamp duty when people misrepresent the nature of transactions. "People today routinely pay me less revenue than they ought to pay because I'm not asking them the right questions. If there's a transaction of a particular nature, they declare it as something else. Since I won't ask questions, I accept it and register it," he said.

"Once I roll out the AI-based system and a person uploads a deed to my registration system, I'll run it through the AI (system) and find out the exact purpose of that deed and charge the appropriate stamp duty," he said.

Making a case for good use of available technology, Gowda cited the example of how BBMP Chief Commissioner Tushar Girinath has identified at least five lakh properties in the city that are not paying property tax. "These properties are getting all municipal services without paying a single pie as tax," he said.

Gowda then pointed to Rural Development & Panchayat Raj Additional Chief Secretary Anjum Parwez detecting 90 lakh such properties in gram panchayat limits. "These properties have never approached the government for title registration. They don't have khatas," he said.

With basic technology, Gowda said authorities can identify properties that are underpaying taxes. "People have built 5,000 sq ft, but are paying taxes for only 500 sq ft. (Girinath) doesn't need very complex tech to tell him that someone isn't paying fully. Imagine the impact on revenues," he said.

Gowda recalled that Karnataka's experimentation with technology started with digitisation of land records -- the famed Bhoomi project -- in 1999.