City survey project: Govt to restrict private partner's role

Fearing that property owners would shy away from subscribing to the proposed Urban Property Ownership Record (UPOR) project, the Empowered Committee on UPOR has decided to restrict the role of the private partner in the project implementation.

Under the original plan of the UPOR project (also called city survey project), the private partner was entrusted with the responsibility of surveying properties, creating a database, generation and distribution of property titles to people by charging a stipulated fee.

“Now, it has been decided that the government department should take up the title distribution work. The private partner will only generate draft property titles and hand them over to the department,” said Deputy Director of land records K V Rudresha.

Security aspect
The Empowered Committee, official sources said, was of the view that property owners may not take the project seriously if private firms are allowed to issue property titles. People may even question the security aspect.

The project will become a failure in that event, sources explained.
The Empowered Committee headed by Chief Secretary S V Ranganath recently decided that the department of Survey, Settlement and Land Records of the State Revenue department should take up the responsibility of distributing property titles or property cards to the property owners.

Hence, it has been decided to place the modified project plan before the State cabinet for its approval, Rudresha added.

Property titles

The project envisages introduction of property titles for the first time in the State.
Under the project, besides carrying out a survey of all properties, the origin and
history of all public and private properties will be traced with the help of village maps.

The project will not only provide clear titles to property owners, but help trace encroachments, especially of the government lands.

The State Cabinet had given its approval for implementing the project across all cities and towns in the State in a phased manner in May this year.

The project is currently being implemented on a pilot basis in Mysore, Shimoga, Mangalore, Bellary and Belgaum. In Bangalore city, the project is planned to be implemented in 50 BBMP wards in the first phase.

Moreover, the Empowered Committee was also of the view that the original plan may not be financially viable for private firms as they will get their money only by selling the titles.
The private partners involved in pilot projects in five cities have started complaining in this regard. So, it was decided to restrict the role of private partners in the project, officials said.

Officials  said the department has completed all preparations to launch the project. It will call for Request for Proposal from private firms soon after obtaining the cabinet’s nod to the revised project.