Now, a portal to check if house stands on raja kaluve

One can now do away with complicated maps or site drawings to know if a house is located on a stormwater drain or raja kaluve. A web-based portal will now do this.

The portal www.raja­kaluve.org enables Bengaluru residents to know if their property is built on a stormwater drain or raja kaluve. All one has to do is enter the taluk, hobli and village details to know the location of the property.

Inaugurating the portal, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Commissioner N Manjunatha Prasad on Wednesday said: “This portal enables public to access information about stormwater drains in one place.”

Joint effort

BBMP, in association with Real Estate Research Initiative of Indian Institute of Management Bengaluru (IIMB-RERI) has developed this portal.

“There is a general fear fuelled by lack of information among citizens on whether their properties encroach water bodies. Through this effort, we hope to allay fears by making information easily accessible to all,” said Professor Venkatesh Panchapagesan, head of IIMB-RERI.

“Information is not easily searchable and encroachment details are often provided only in the text embedded within survey drawings released by government agencies,” said Sriram Ranganathan, product manager, IIMB-RERI.

350 villages

What began as an initiative for mapping of 50 villages around Whitefield, is now being expanded to provide details of 350 villages to help citizens.

Available in both Kannada and English, the portal makes it easy to access BBMP documents with details of encroachments and gives a summary view.

This would also give an indication of possible notifications from BBMP in future based on documents collected from land­records.karnataka.gov.in/

A list of all affected survey numbers will be displayed below with links to relevant documents.

Colour codes help one identify the risk. A red dot indicates that the property is located on a raja kaluve and is notified as “encroaching”.

Yellow indicates that the property is located on a storm water drain, grey that the status is unclear and green if it is safe.