Bengaluru: BBMP to rein in officers for smoother e-khata

Bengaluru: Taking a cue from the Income Tax Department, Bengaluru’s civic body is developing a new system to make the e-khata issuance process faceless by reducing the control of Assistant Revenue Officers (AROs) over their respective areas.

In a month, e-khata requests from citizens will be automatically routed among BBMP staff, instead of being confined to the desks of jurisdictional officers as is currently the case. This change will help clear backlogs and minimise the unnecessary harassment property owners face from revenue officers.

So far, the BBMP has issued final e-khata certificates to about 1.3 lakh property owners. This is just about 5% of the 24 lakh properties in Bengaluru. On average, the civic body receives about 5,000 such applications daily.

The proposed system, officials said, will also help in evenly distributing e-khata requests among the 64 Assistant Revenue Officers (ARO), who have been given access to about 200 login IDs. For instance, Mahadevapura Zone is currently seeing more requests for e-khata than other zones.

As the e-khata issuance process is designed to be faceless and contactless, officials expect the transition to be smooth, as most requests do not require direct interaction.

For the BBMP, it’s a bold step. The change in approach follows directions from Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar, who also holds the Bengaluru Development portfolio, to cut red tape and make the process of issuing e-khata completely transparent and time-bound.

“Since the decision to issue e-khata is based entirely on documents, personal meetings with revenue officers are unnecessary,” said Munish Moudgil, Special Commissioner (Revenue), BBMP.

Common complaints from the public include name mismatches, spelling errors, and incorrect built-up area entries.

“These corrections can be suggested online without a physical meeting,” Moudgil explained. “The officer concerned will approve corrections after reviewing the sale deed, registered deed or our property register. Personal visits to BBMP offices are irrelevant.”

As the scale of the rollout is huge, the BBMP has been reviewing e-khata applications and tracking pending requests daily.

“If delays seem intentional, we file charges against the responsible officers,” Moudgil added. “Personal visits are only required when the mutation is due to inheritance. Sales-based mutations do not require such visits.”

Raghavendra Rao, a resident of RR Nagar, shared his experience of uploading documents for the final e-khata copy, which took about three hours.

“I had to log in 12 times due to system timeouts, and the website eventually asked me to visit the ARO office for the final copy,” he said, suggesting improvements.

However, Moudgil clarified that such visits are not necessary before or after applying for an e-khata, as the final document can be downloaded directly from the website.