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In a startling revelation, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) officials have discovered that the civic body's revenue staff allegedly issued A khatas to over 40,000 properties illegally since the financial year 2015-16.
A khata is a revenue document that signifies legal ownership of a property, and B khata is issued for properties that do not comply with all legal requirements. The BBMP, after uncovering the illegal issuance, will now be establishing zonal-level teams to scrutinize 45,133 recently issued A khatas, as a staggering 90% of them are suspected to be unauthorized.
Mr. Jayaram Raipura, the Special Commissioner of Finance at BBMP, penned a letter on Friday to the zonal commissioners, urging them to assemble teams to verify the legitimacy of these A khatas. Raipura explained that the BBMP had allowed the collection of development charges through the Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS) software for properties situated in legally converted lands, based on their measurements, and subsequently issued A khatas.
However, during the verification process of these A khatas, it was discovered that revenue officials had unlawfully collected development charges for B khata properties and issued them A khatas, leading to the loss of revenue for the civic body.
An astonishing sum of Rs 898.7 crore in development charges had been collected from the owners of the 45,133 properties since the fiscal year 2015-16. Among them, 37,968 properties had paid less than Rs 1 lakh, raising suspicion that the majority of these cases were associated with illegal A khatas. Additionally, A khatas were also issued to 7,165 properties, with development charges ranging from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 10 lakh, but a significant portion of these were also believed to be illegal.
Approximately 90% of the 45,133 properties were found to have acquired A khatas illicitly. As a result, the BBMP has urged all zonal commissioners to form teams of revenue officials to identify and reverse all illegal A khatas, converting them back to B khatas.
Sources from the Palike reveal that a review committee had been constituted earlier to investigate the alleged illegal issuance of A khatas. It had instructed revenue officials to prepare comprehensive reports on the matter, leading to the submission of a report in June, stating that around 9,736 illegal A khatas had been identified. However, upon further verification by the committee, it was found that the number of illegally issued A khatas had exceeded a staggering 40,000 over the past eight years.
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