Half or more than 50% of properties, both commercial and residential, have either deviations from the sanctioned plans with unauthorised floors and usage or even illegal constructions in the four municipal corporations across Telangana.
This was found out when satellite mapped data of urban properties was juxtaposed with the ground-level situation, indicating a big gap in property tax collection due to lack of proper assessments or under-assessments.
A few months ago, Department of Municipal Administration & Urban Development’s Commissioner & Director of Municipal Administration (CDMA) had successfully completed satellite mapping and geo-tagging of 12.5 lakh properties across the 72 ULBs (other than GHMC) with the help of ISRO-National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC).
A survey conducted by an independent third party agency has revealed that Karimnagar has 26,091 properties with building deviations or illegal constructions; Nizamabad 37,143; Khammam 14,603 and Ramagundam 26,932.
NRSC’s ‘Bhuvan’ online geo-portal platform was utilised for map visualisation and satellite images absolutely free. These were integrated with available house numbers, property tax and registration details in ULBs.
Senior municipal officials were shocked to see satellite images showing large-scale deviations almost matching the number of properties or more than those existing in their respective building records when it was crosschecked with field-level scrutiny in the four top ULBs (apart from Hyderabad & Warangal)
Third party independent audit of the satellite imagery is being done on instructions of IT and Municipal Administration Minister K.T. Rama Rao and has laid bare the extent of property tax avoidance in ULBs.
More data expected
The department is expecting more such data with all municipal bodies submitting their reports and from next month onwards, most of these ‘hidden or missing’ properties could be brought under the tax net and possibly, garner more income to them.
“We have instructed all municipal commissioners to make use of the satellite data to determine the actual properties on ground and issue notices for property taxes. These are the most urbanised areas and so the deviations appear to be more but it could be the same in other municipal bodies too but the number may be less,” said CDMA T.K. Sreedevi.
The data has already been used to issue about 28,000 notices for similar under-assessment or un-assessment of property taxes in ULBs following the independent audit to check for fault lines.
