Property cards in M'lore to be issued soon: Ponnuraj

Property transaction using RTC or Khata will be stopped with the issue of property cards to asset holders under the Urban Property Ownership Record (UPOR) project in Mangalore City Corporation limits.

Property cards will be the only official document using which one can transact the property, said Survey, Settlement and Land Records Department Commissioner V Ponnuraj.

Addressing reporters at the deputy commissioner’s office here on Monday, the officer said the work on comprehensive surveying and collecting of property documents is going on in full swing in Mangalore which is the third city in the State where the UPOR project is being implemented, after Shimoga and Mysore.

“We have set a target of issuing at least 50,000 to 60,000 property cards in the next six months,” he said.

Of the estimated 1.50 lakh properties in the city, 1.45 lakh properties have been surveyed.

Of the surveyed ones, the department has recovered documents of 67,000 properties in the last one year. As far as the pending documents to be recovered is concerned, around 25,000 properties are apartments, and 20,000 are vacant sites.

Collecting documents for vacant sites is a challenge as the owners are not easily available, he said, as he requested the owners to co-operate with providing documents for the progress of the project.

10 digit unique ID

Briefing the features and advantages of the property card, Ponnuraj said that the project intends to make the properties litigation free.

The project which involves surveying, identifying, mapping and collecting documents of the property will conclude with the issuing of property cards to the property owners or the occupants.

Each card in the form of a booklet will have a 10 digit unique ID, and various sections such as ownership, land rights, liabilities, thus furnishing all the information about the property in one document.

Scrapping of RTC and Khata for property transaction and replacing it with the property card will help to make the transaction process hassle free.

The difference between the actual size of the land as against the one mentioned in the existing property record too will be rectified in the survey, thus producing a mirror image of the ground on the paper.

The data will be shared with the local municipality and will help the government to curb tax evasion, he elaborated.

Project in Bangalore

The UPOR is under implementation stage in Hubli-Dharwad and will be initiated in Bangalore in a few months.

In the capital city, the project will be taken up on zonal basis, as the city is estimated to have 18 lakh to 20 lakh properties.

In continuation, the project is also implemented in 28 villages in 14 districts of the State, on a pilot basis, Ponnuraj said.

The property re-survey has been taken up in Maroor in Moodbidri and Kodimbadi in Puttur, in Dakshina Kannada district. Meanwhile, the district administration has been directed to start a massive drive on rectifying the RTC errors. The drive is likely to begin in the district next week.