Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) officials found that the civic body’s revenue staff have allegedly issued A khatas to over 40,000 properties illegally since 2015-16.
The civic body will be forming zonal-level teams to verify 45,133 newly issued A khatas as 90% of them are suspected to be illegal ones. A khatas found illegal will be reversed to B khata.
Special commissioner (finance), BBMP, Jayaram Raipura wrote to the zonal commissioners on Friday and requested them to form teams to verify illegal A khatas.
Raipura stated in his letter that BBMP had given the provision of collecting development charges through Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS) software and issued A khatas for properties located in legally converted lands based on their measurements.
“During the verification of A khatas, revenue officials collected the development charges illegally for B-khata properties and illegally issued them A khatas,” Raipura stated in his letter.
He further stated that revenue officials collected Rs 898.7 crore as development charges from the owners of 45,133 properties since 2015-16. Among them, they collected less than Rs 1 lakh for the 37,968 properties and it was estimated that most of them are illegal A khatas. The revenue officials also issued A khatas to 7,165 properties by collecting development charges between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 10 lakh. The civic body suspects many of them too are illegal A khatas.
“More than 90% of the 45,133 properties have availed A khatas illegally. So, all zonal commissioners have been requested to form a team of revenue officials to find all illegal A khatas and reverse them to B khatas,” Raipura requested in his letter.
According to Palike sources, a review committee was formed to look into the alleged illegal A khatas. Also, earlier it had instructed revenue officials to prepare detailed reports about the illegal A khatas and submit them to the review committee. The revenue officials submitted the reports in June stating that around 9,736 illegal A khatas had been issued. But further verification by the committee revealed that there were more than 40,000 illegal A khatas issued in the last eight years.