The revenue department hopes that the proposed Unique Property Records (UPR) programme, which is the urban replication of the revolutionary Bhoomi project that computerized land records in rural areas, will wipe out irregularities in urban property documentation.
"Bhoomi showed us how we could check manipulation of land records. The revenue department had so far not bothered much about cleaning up urban property records. From 2002, Bhoomi focused on digitizing the properties in Karnataka's rural areas. We will now map urban properties on the same lines. Once the Urban Property Records come into picture, there will be no parallel database and fictitious documents cannot be created. A unified property identity document will be issued to all urban property owners and will be accepted by all agencies. The municipalities can bank on the data we create," revenue secretary Rajeev Chawla told TOI.
The Urban Property Records project will be taken up on a pilot basis in 55 wards and cover four lakh properties. "The project will be taken up on a private public partnership basis. It will take off in January 2012. Both government and private properties in all these wards will be first surveyed. A title enquiry will be called for and the property owners must come forward and submit related documents to prove their ownership. We will open service centres for the public. A unique property number will be issued to each of the properties," revenue secretary Rajeev Chawla said.
For the full report in the ToI, click here
Long overdue work - surprising what took it so long to be taken up.
Muralidhar Rao
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Why the surprise?
Long overdue work - surprising what took it so long to be taken up.
Why are you surprised? Just because something is long overdue does not mean that is done. One thing I can bet though... as they go through this (re)survey, lot of interesting disputes will surface, especially in the newer areas of the city. I can think of 1-2 in my neighborhood itself involving some influential people. What happens then? Will these guys have the political will to resolve those equitably? Let's wait and watch.
UPOR project making progress
Speaking on UPOR (unique property ownership record), Gowda (CM) said that Bangalore has been known as the IT-BT city. For the past many years, it is also known as city of land grabbers, land mafia and tax evaders. With the new PID system, number of properties identified in Bangalore has increased from 11 lakh to 16.19 lakh. “One cannot hide their property from BBMP. BBMP which is collecting Rs 1,200 crore from property tax is expected to increase the amount to Rs 3000 crore for all properties,” he said. - - - - Through the PID system, government properties will be saved from land grabbers. Also, it will be easy for BBMP to identify tax defaulters.
For the full report in the New Indian Express, click here.
The CM has generally making a lot of right noises, including in this case. It'll be interesting to see how the project pans out. My concern stems from a lack of professional approach we have seen so far on the part of government agencies - check this. Perhaps, it could even be deliberate some times