Citizens who complain about the lack of civic amenities often forget that it is their duty to pay taxes, according to Chief Minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda.
Speaking after launching the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike's (BBMP) unique property identification (PID) number here on Friday, he said that through the project, the civic body had identified 16.19 lakh properties in the city. All of them would be brought under the tax net.
“With this, the BBMP can collect nearly Rs. 3,000 crore as property tax. Probably then, the civic body will begin to expect less ‘help' from the State Government,” he said.
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Mr. Sadananda Gowda said PID would later be integrated with the State Revenue Department's Urban Property Ownership Record (UPOR). “UPOR would be implemented across the State. In Mysore, there were 1.2 lakh tax payers earlier. Through UPOR, we found that there were 1.76 lakh properties. Nearly 30,000 properties have been identified as government land,” he said.
Appreciating the efforts of the BBMP in launching the geographical information system (GIS)-based PID, he said the civic body had collected around Rs. 1,200 crore from 11 lakh property owners. “PID will help BBMP increase its revenue collection and bring in transparency in administration. The BBMP can use PID to identify government properties and map slum areas,” Mr. Sadananda Gowda added.
Senior BBMP officials involved in the project said details of the properties would be made available on a public domain soon. This project can be used as a platform for various applications in future.
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The official said the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board had evinced interest in utilising the project to map their water and sewerage lines.
“The police can profile crimes using this scheme. The BBMP itself can use it to map its assets, issue licences for optic fibre cables and put in place a management system for the same and also take up complaint profiling after receiving grievances from the public,” they said.
Mayor Sharadamma; B.N. Vijaykumar, C.N. Ashwath Narayan and Hemachandra Sagar, MLAs; Deputy Mayor S. Harish, Ruling Party Leader B.R. Nanjundappa, and Opposition Leader in BBMP council M. Udayshankar were present among others.