State to get urban property inventory via geo-tagging

Pradeep Sharma
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, October 15

For the first time, Haryana is set to have an accurate inventory of all properties in urban areas across the state through geo-mapping.

The Urban Local Bodies Department is set to kick off the project, aimed at augmenting financial resources of 81 municipalities, 10 municipal corporations, 53 municipal committees and 18 municipal councils.

“Once complete, the project will ensure zero-error inventory of the urban property which will go a long way in increasing resources of civic bodies through better realisation of property tax,” Urban Local Bodies Minister Kavita Jain said.

Officials said drones would be pressed into service to determine the exact location of each ward, street and house with a view to preparing a base map for each town. The record in the base map will be synchronised with the old record of the respective municipality to prepare the authentic record.

The final record will be fed into the online portal to be developed by the National Informatics Centre to prepare the inventory of the respective municipal body. The aim is to develop a mobile application which would take care of all issues related to the payment of taxes of the urban property, the official highlighted.

Currently, in the absence any authentic data on number of properties, MCs are not able to collect property tax from all property holders. Besides, the manual system of compiling records and collection of tax has led to large-scale evasion.

The geo-tagging of properties, officials asserted, would do away with irregularities associated with the current manual system. The online payment of property tax would provide huge relief to the general public, the officials added.