Drones to map properties

It will first be tried in two wards

\Chief Minister V.Narayanasamy launches drone mapping of properties in Puducherry on Thursday.

Chief Minister V. Narayanasamy on Thursday launched a drone survey to map properties in Puducherry under the Capacity Building Urban Development (CBUD) programme.

Addressing the media, the Chief Minister said the Central government-sponsored project would assess the area, depth and other properties of the buildings. This would help improve the property tax, he said.

“The survey will help in examining the under valued and incorrectly valued properties. A database will be created based on the information where all the undervalued and incorrectly valued properties will be identified and no one can evade tax,” he said.

Identifying evasion

He said the survey would also help in identifying residences used for commercial activities.

P. Jawahar, Secretary to Government (LAD), told

The Hindu that the drone would first map the under assessed and unassessed properties in ward 12 in Puducherry municipality and ward 14 in Oulgaret municipality. “The assessment of the properties in Puducherry and Oulgaret municipalities will be completed by March 2018. This will help in creating a comprehensive assessment of the under-assessed and un-assessed properties,” he said.

The project sponsored as part of the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) scheme by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, will be carried out by GIS Consortium Private Limited at a cost of ₹2.76 crore.

The urban agglomeration in Puducherry extends to 77 sq km. There are 43,000 households in Puducherry and 45,000 to 50,000 in the Oulgaret municipality. The mapping of buildings will be followed by ground truthing, verifying all data including the area and depth of the building. Through this project, new layouts and extensions will be easily mapped.

“The online mapping will be superimposed on a platform. This data will be validated on a GIS platform and a 3D image will be created to examine the properties. This project will create a GIS base and multiple layers and one such layer is property. Apart from property tax, different services could be added to this,” he said.

He added that they can even analyse how a property is appreciating.

An official at LAD said there were not enough tax or bill collectors.