Further ramping up its measures to monitor the non-payment of property tax in Bengaluru, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) is now considering deploying drones to survey and 3-D map buildings to check if property owners are paying their dues, according to a report in The Times of India.
The BBMP has reportedly included the drone plan in its proposal for smart city planning and will submit it to the Union government soon.
“Three-dimensional (3-D) mapping will help us form a more realistic documentation of the properties in the city. Clear images will help us check violations that property owners may resort to. We will prepare a detailed project report and call for agencies to help us in surveying the properties using drones. Drones can also get us images from congested areas which are a problem during manual or machine-supported surveys,” an official told TOI.
Earlier, the BBMP had set up a Geospatial Enabled Property Tax Information System (GEPTIS) link under the citizen services tab on its website. The online platform was inaugurated by CM Siddaramaiah. The GEPTIS had been set up in association with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and will soon be open for public use. It helped BBMP to track property tax collection across the city, through the Bhuvan Karnataka platform, created by the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), Hyderabad, a wing of ISRO.
However, the BBMP has been having its own problems in property tax collections. Recently, the Joint Commissioner, BBMP, Revenue Department, Dr Prasanna Kumar received numerous complaints from residents, who complained that the amount payable as property tax was lesser than what was reflected on the website.
The senior revenue official said that for different zones, the property tax amount varies, and the zonal certificates were updated on the website last year.
“Last year there were many glitches in the website. So, people ended up paying lesser tax than they actually had to. This year, after all the glitches were fixed, the outstanding amount payable has been added to the said properties,” Dr Prasanna said.