Pune Municipal Corporation conducted a survey which found around 47,000 properties that fall in the ambit of the property tax department. PMC is expecting revenue of more than Rs 100 crore per annum from these properties. This was revealed during an ongoing survey of GIS mapping of properties across the city. It will take another six months for the survey to conclude.
Suhas Mapari, head of PMC’s property tax department, while speaking media, said, “We have hired a private agency to complete the GIS mapping and tagging of each property. The work includes identifying new properties, change of use of properties (residential into commercial use), open plots, extra construction and so on. Till date, the company has completed the scrutiny of 330,000 properties. Out of that, they found 46,921 properties that were due for property tax, including more than 6,000 new ones. We are expecting more than Rs 185 crore of revenue from these properties so far. During survey work, we are simultaneously sending a property tax bills to the property holders concerned.”
The survey began from November 2016 and its contract includes verifying the existing size of properties, mentioning data of property owners (name, mobile, e-mail address), clicking photographs of properties and their documents, mentioning their longitude and altitude, their building permissions among other things. PMC has initiated the tagging of unassessed and unauthorised properties and change-of-use properties across the city, along with the GIS mapping.
GIS mapping is also pointing out illegal constructions, encroachments on public, government or private land. The administration can also keep track of the status of amenity spaces with the mapping. Almost 400 people are conducting the survey and have been given the target of verifying and mapping around 16,000 properties per week. At present, PMC has a total of 9.34 lakh properties. Out of that, 7.93 lakh are residential. Commercial properties number 97,738 and open spaces are 28,755. Other categories includes 14, 623 properties.
