The Mysuru City Corporation (MCC) on Wednesday eased the procedure of securing building plan approval which will be now done online.
The facility was launched by the Mayor, Tasneem, at the MCC office and the new system is expected to usher in more transparency and eliminate corruption. Once the documents are uploaded the building plan approval will be issued within a month, the authorities said.
The website to visit is www.mrc.gov.in which will open up the home page of Karnataka Municipal Data Society wherein the user will have to click on the citizens’ online services.
Easier procedure
Gurudutt Hegde, Commissioner, MCC, said the facility has eased the procedure to apply and procure the licence for the end-user but there is no substitute to physical verification etc., which will be conducted by the officials.
The MCC is also bracing for online payment of property tax from April 1 and almost 60 per cent of the work pertaining to it was over. Mr. Hegde said the available property records are being digitised and they are confident of the online launch on April 1 which happens to be the beginning of the new financial year.
There are nearly 1.87 lakh properties in Mysuru the records of which have to be scanned and digitised. The MCC plans to go online with the existing records and submissions made by the property owners under the SAS (Self-Assessment Scheme) system. In the second phase, a fresh property survey will be undertaken to check the veracity of the claims made by the property owners with respect to the quality of the construction. If there are differences they would be entered in the records and the difference amount would be incorporated in the property tax calculation.
Subsequently, the MCC will also go for geo-mapping of the property all of which will take nearly an year. “To start with we want to introduce the online property tax payment system for the benefit of the end user’’, said the MCC Commissioner.
The online system is in vogue in most city corporations and even smaller towns in the State but Mysuru was lagging behind and efforts to introduce the system did not bear fruit. Property tax is the single most important source of revenue for the MCC to provide civic amenities but it has fallen short of the revenue target. Going online and digitising property records is expected to bring more properties in the tax net and shore up MCC’s revenue.