ISRO to help BBMP crack under-assessment, bring new properties into tax net

Highlights                                      

• The BBMP has come under severe criticism for realising only a fraction of the potential property tax collection.
• For instance, the Economic Survey 2016-17 of the Union Finance Ministry said Bengaluru and Jaipur were only collecting 5% – 20% of their potential property tax.
• The latest satellite images from the LISS-IV and Cartosat-1 data — the technology being adopted — with one-metre spatial resolution is being used as a base map for the exercise.
• ISRO will deploy shadow technology to estimate the height of each of these buildings, which will help identify any additional development of buildings already part of the tax net.
• Reports of the findings will be available ward-wise, helping shore up tax collection.
• The superimposed map will be available on a mobile app to help ward-level officials track the difference, and raise tax demands

Source: The Hindu