Bengaluru: The BBMP introduced a new feature on its property tax system, asking citizens to enter the latitude and longitude (lat-long) coordinates of their properties.
However, when residents were struggling to find the GPS data that is key to completing the payment process, the civic body decided, on Friday evening, to withdraw the 'mandatory' feature, making it 'optional' from Saturday.
Over the last five days, many residents who chose to pay the property tax for the year 2024-25 complained that they were not able to pay the property tax as they did not know the lat-long coordinates of their property. Some even entered the wrong location details to complete the payment of tax.
More importantly, the BBMP had not made any prior announcement ahead of introducing the new feature on its property tax website. On Friday evening, DH found the 'mandatory' feature of the lat-log coordinate was in force.
The feature can prove to be a headache for properties occupied only by senior citizens and those without smartphones.
Citizens voice concern
Some citizens shared their concerns on social media. “It is causing harassment to citizens,” one of them said. “Why is the BBMP making it difficult for people to pay property tax?” another wondered.
Bengaluru NavaNirmana Party (BNP) founder Srikanth Narasimhan wondered what was the necessity for the BBMP to introduce a feature without taking citizens into confidence.
“Irrespective of whether the lat-log details are optional or mandatory, how does the data help the BBMP? What are they going to do with the data? The BBMP has not made it clear to the public," Narasimhan said, dubbing the feature a hare-brained idea.
Munish Moudgil, Special Commissioner (Revenue), Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, said: “We will not make (the feature) mandatory since many are finding it hard to locate the GPS coordinates of their properties. If a citizen has entered the wrong details, they can make necessary corrections in the future.”
“At the moment, we do not have GPS records of properties paying taxes. This makes it difficult to plug tax deviations.”