Khammam: Discrepancies found in digitalisation of houses

Khammam: The lack of seriousness in updating the properties in the limits of Khammam Municipal Corporation (KMC) has turned out to be a curse to the digitilisation program.

The government introduced Bhuvan (as a software application with many add-on features and capabilities) for digitilisation of houses in KMC to check malpractice in evaluating property and for perfect location in terms of addresses and colonies.

There are 67,000 houses in KMC with 4.3 lakh population. It is planned to update all the houses to assess property tax. The KMC staff who did not have proper knowledge, entered improper measurements of the houses.

The revenue inspectors of KMC assessed the house tax as per the details available in the computer.  As a result many discrepancies were found in tax amounts. Many of the households are refusing to pay the tax amounts noted in the bills. Two persons who had the same houses received demand notices with different figures.

The land extent, plinth area and carpet area is the same in the two houses. One person received a tax notice of Rs 3000 while the other got a demand for Rs 10,000.

Interestingly, the staff failed to check the double entries in the town.

For example, B. Satyanarayaan, who is residing in an apartment in Vijayanagar Colony, is facing such a problem. Two house numbers were generated on his one apartment and Bhuvan failed to correct it.

Satyaranayana said, “I have been receiving bills on two house numbers and I approached the revenue officials to correct it. They assured that one would be deleted, but it has not been done.”

Such complaints were in hundreds and the people are thronging KMC office everyday for correction. Interestingly, the reason for such lacunae is scarcity of  staff.

There are only three revenue inspectors and 11 bill collectors instead of twelve RIs and 36 bill collectors. The target for collecting house tax is Rs 21 crore.