GIS productive?, Bengaluru thinks different

Bengaluru: The BBMP has been dre­a­m­ing big about collecting property taxes of Rs 3,200 crore for 2013-14 with the help of Geog­raphical Infor­mation Sy­s­tem (GIS) based property identification number. But PID data is not accurate and data of about 4,000 properties does not match with the records. This would affect the BBMP’s target of Rs 3,200 crore, they said.

If the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike uses Geographical Infor­ma­tion System (GIS) based Property Identity (PID), it will not even reach even 50 per cent of the target, claimed BBMP revenue inspectors and tax inspectors.

Instead, the manual register should be made available to the revenue authorities, which could help reach at least 90 per cent of the target, they said.
The GIS-based PID system does not allow alpha-numeric entries. It takes only odd and even numbers across the city, which leaves out scores of properties. Under the new system, over 4,000 properties cannot be validated at all, they said.

The idea behind the new system of splitting a road into many is giving a tough time to tax inspe­ctors and revenue officials to locate the properties and collect taxes. For instance, Bellary Road, which courses through four wards, has been split into four. Earlier, irrespective of the ward, the road was taken as one unit and it was easy to collect property tax from all the properties, said a few revenue officials.

The software has many bugs, but tax inspectors and revenue officials have been slapped with notices for no fault of theirs. The software is not accepting the validation of many properties, they added.

The demand notice for the revalidated properties cannot be uploaded online. The citizens can take undue advantage of the problem and avoid paying taxes or pay old tax. This leads to leakage of revenue to the BBMP, they said.

Sheshadri, IT advisor to the BBMP, admitted that validation of 4,000-odd properties was not matching. Efforts are being made to get it rectified with the help of revenue authorities. The properties across the city have been bifurcated into 41 categories.

This will help the BBMP increase property tax collection, he clai­med. Once the revalidation is complete, data will be made available online. Objections will be invited from the public, he said.