Telangana’s mega project to geotagged real estate structures nears completion

Some 1.77 million properties have already been mapped out of 2.08 million properties in 141 ULBs to be mapped

Hyderabad: The municipal administration’s massive effort to spatially integrate property information by mapping and geotagging each property in the 141 Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) is nearing completion, with 87 percent of the structures mapped and tagged. Telangana is the first state in the country to do so on a large scale.

Some 1.77 million properties have already been mapped out of the 2.08 million properties in the 141 ULBs that will be mapped. This will help the department ensure transparency in property valuations, in addition to identifying undervalued and non-valued structures. The Commissioner and Director (Municipalities) is working on mapping all properties in urban areas and geotagging them. This was done jointly with the space technology agency National Remote Sensing Center (NRSC).

For this purpose, NRSC has developed a special mobile application ‘Bhuvan’ for geotagging of all city properties. The online platform provides image and map visualizations. The basic idea is to spatially integrate attribute information by geotagging each attribute. Among other things, this work will help identify under-assessed and non-assessed properties.

The work will help bring all such structures under tax jurisdiction and increase the tax base, avoiding the need to amend tax rates to provide better services to citizens, a senior official said, adding that, so far, To date, 26,026 new properties have been mapped.

What’s more, this work will reduce the amount of unauthorized construction allowed in building plan approvals. Based on the data collected and images of the structure, besides constructing additional floors or square footage, tax revisions were made to those buildings where measurement discrepancies were found, the official said, adding that so far, 2 ,49,937 assessments and there were amounts resulting in Rs 873.6 crore.

– 2.080 million attributes in 141 ULBs to map
– 1.77 million properties mapped to date (87% complete)
– 26,026 new attributes mapped so far
– Newly built buildings that are not taxed are taxed at the prevailing old rate

how it’s done

– NRSC has developed Bhuvan, a special mobile application for geotagging
– Users are trained to use the app by the NRSC
– The mobile application is installed in the device with the user’s personal registration.
– User-wise allocation of geofences and survey areas
– User survey and geotagging of properties.
– Verification/audit process.
– Integrate with ULB database.
– Identify and assess under-assessed and under-assessed properties.