GHMC set to revive house-numbering project

Hyderabad: The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) will make yet another attempt to increase its property tax collection by implementing the long-pending digital house-numbering project, which has not had bidders for the past two years.

The house-numbering system that is currently in use has several drawbacks. Houses are identified using 14-digit numbers that have been allotted to them on a first-come first-serve basis, irrespective of location. The rapid growth of the city has led to inconsistencies in the storage of addresses, irregular numbering, and several missing links. 

In order to overcome these problems, the Corporation has decided to adopt the Unique Smart Addressing Solution for Urban Dwellings (USASUD) in Greater Hyderabad, as part of which houses will be digitally numbered, geo-tagged, and integrated with the GHMC database. 

The project was first proposed two years ago, but it did not materialise due to a clash between bidders, which resulted in a legal dispute. When the GHMC invited tenders for the second time, it did not have any takers. 

Now, the Corporation hopes to successfully revive the project. It has already identified that it is collecting property taxes from only 14 lakh of the 20 lakh households in the city due to inaccurate house-numbering. It hopes to earn an additional '200 crore this financial year from about 6 lakh residential and non-residential properties that are evading property taxes, through the implementation of the digital house-numbering system. 

The GHMC has made several unsuccessful attempts to increase its property tax collection in the past. In 2016, it embarked on a “Tsunami Survey” for the re-verification of 1 lakh non-residential properties paying less than Rs 1,200 in property taxes. 

The project does not produce the desired results as bill collectors were found to be working hand in glove with the property owners indulging in irregularities. 

After that, the corporation decided to rationalise the property taxes of nearly 12 lakh residential buildings. It hoped to earn Rs 600 crore through the two exercises, but it only managed to earn Rs 150 crore. 

More recently, the GHMC integrated its database with the databases of the Water Board, the Commercial Taxes Department, the Electricity Department, the Revenue Department, and the Registrations Department, in an attempt to produce a more accurate record of residential and commercial properties. However, it had to abandon its effort midway because residents began receiving text messages from unofficial sources asking them to pay property taxes to the civic body. 

“We are confident that digital house-numbering and data integration will produce better results than our previous exercises,” said a senior official from the Revenue Department. What remains to be seen is if the GHMC will manage to produce the desired results, given that its field-level staff has been responsible for irregularities exposed in the collection of property taxes in the past. “The government has to either recruit new staff or deploy qualified persons to produce results,” the official added.