The Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) has completed the issuance of over one lakh integrated e-khatas in Bengaluru, marking a significant step in the integration of digitised property ownership records. This initiative, through drone imagery, was made possible through the development of survey maps under the Urban Properties Ownership Record (UPOR) project, which is managed by the state revenue department.
“We have integrated city survey UPOR property maps along with drone overview with GBA e-khata,” Munish Moudgil, Special Commissioner for Revenue and Information Technology at the GBA, said on Wednesday.
The integrated e-khata contains “all owner information, property details, property photo, owner’s photo, GPS of property, digital map of property and its location image, property tax details and usage details, Bangalore Electricity Supply Company Limited (BESCOM) meter number and document number based on which property ownership is acquired,” the GBA officer said.
“We depend on accurate GPS of e-khata to connect with the correct UPOR map and image. It’s painstaking work. We have issued about one lakh integrated ekhatas and are continuing to do more daily,” Moudgil said.
“The GBA that began the e-khata system two years ago has issued final e-khatas for about nine lakh properties in Bengaluru. They are currently processing about 2,500 e-khata requests daily with an average waiting time of about two days, the GBA officer said.
UPOR project of the revenue department was launched in 2014 in Shimoga and Mangaluru on a pilot basis, and was later adopted for other cities in the state.
This system, along with digitised property records, plays a crucial role in safeguarding public properties—such as lakes, drains, parks, forest areas, and coastal zones—as well as private properties against land encroachments.
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According to a November 2018 UPOR policy paper by the Institute of Social and Economic Change, more than 70 per cent of legal disputes in India are related to land. It stated that “the need for a computerised process of land title registration system introduced in Karnataka for urban centres cannot be overlooked”.