BBMP Special Commissioner (Revenue) Munish Moudgil during the #THTalksBengaluru online interaction in Bengaluru on Thursday.
| Photo Credit: K. BHAGYA PRAKASH
Software for those who do not have manual khatas yet can get their e-khatas will be rolled out in a few days, said Munish Moudgil, Special Commissioner (Revenue), Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). It will be done once the loophole where property owners who already have a manual khata for their property can get e-khatas from both systems is plugged.
“As we found a loophole, we are now trying to fix it. We do not want property owners who already have the final e-khata to get it again. It may lead to deceiving buyers, and the same property can be sold to two persons. We are now finding a way to resolve this problem,” he said.
It will add more properties to the tax net, and there may be about 5 lakh such properties. Some properties will be taxed despite not having khata. However, he added, property owners who have not paid tax must pay to secure the final e-khata.
“In a day or two, we are rolling out a parallel system where if people have not paid property tax or have no khata, but you have a document of ownership – at least a sale deed, they can apply in this parallel system. We will issue them a draft e-khata and property ID, after which they can pay the tax, and we will issue the final khata on that,” he said, participating in the #THTalksBengaluru interactive programme at The Hindu office here on Thursday.
He also said the BBMP is releasing a new module for builders creating vertical developments (flats) to get e-khata: “This is not one of those 22 lakh khatas which are already on our list and released. It is for new khata requests. Basically, a new software or a module for new khatas is being released for vertical flats, where the builder will get the first khata that will be released in around five to seven days.”
Faceless, contactless
Explaining the rationale behind introducing e-khata, Mr. Moudgil said it aims to be faceless and contactless and to give citizens full control over their e-khata.
“Till October 1, 2024, BBMP property records have been maintained in a manual register in 64 assistant revenue offices. There are about 22 lakh property records. People were being forced to go to these offices despite the application being online and manually writing the previous owners and other details. There was no way to keep an eye on what was happening here. Under e-khata, 10 months ago, we digitised each of these 22 lakh records. We put them up online. Each ward has about 10,000 to 15,000 ownership records. There was no unique ID like Aadhaar or ration card number, though. BBMP numbers were non-standardised and unscientific. No good mechanism to search the details despite digitisation,” he said.
“As data available was minimal, only four to five out of 20-25 fields for details of ownership, we are releasing draft e-khata. We want the citizens to be in full control of it. We are only asking for four to five pieces of information: sale deed, Aadhaar, property tax number, electricity bill number, photo of the property,” he added.
English versions soon
Responding to questions about the lack of English versions of the application in a cosmopolitan city like Bengaluru, Mr Moudgil said the BBMP is working towards bringing out more detailed English versions, including the e-khata, which will be made available in the next 10 days.
Published – December 12, 2024 10:17 pm IST
