Wednesday, 21 July 2021 | PNS | Dehradun
In order to maximise property tax collection from residential and commercial establishments, the Municipal Corporation of Dehradun (MCD) will start a survey of all the buildings in Dehradun with drones using Geographic Information System (GIS) from August.
The corporation is also developing a mobile app that will provide all the details of the property of every local resident which will be available to local residents too. As informed by the officials, MCD receives the property tax on only about 50 per cent of properties in the city. For now, the property owners deposit property tax on the basis of self assessment of the properties which is not always physically verified by the corporation due to which, many residents do not pay the property tax at all. However, the corporation under the Urban Development Directorate will now use GIS based survey to map the buildings for a thorough analysis of the properties using drones. Besides this, MCD will also commence door to door survey for additional details like electricity connection, water connection and total rooms to obtain complete data of the buildings.
The corporation will also issue a unique property identification number to each building of every ward after compiling the data. Ashish Kataith, who is managing this project in the MCD informed that the corporation has hired a private company to operate drones for GIS mapping. The company will start the survey as a pilot project in the Kaulagarh ward. Since the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has approved the operation of drones, the survey using drones as well as door to door survey will be commenced from August 1, informed Kathait. He said that both surveys might take 30 to 40 days to complete in a single ward depending on the size of the ward and about two years for the whole city. “We will form 30 teams to conduct surveys across the city and further planning will depend on our pilot project in Kaulagarh,” said Kathait. It is pertinent to mention here that Urban Development Directorate announced earlier this year that GIS would be used for mapping buildings as a pilot project in four urban local bodies in Uttarakhand- Dehradun, Haridwar, Rudrapur and Rishikesh.
