Revenue officials from Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) have started issuing notices to 9,736 alleged illegal A-khata holders, informing them that the civic body is reverting their properties to the B-khata registry.
According to BBMP officials, the khata holders will have 15 days to submit their objections and supporting documents to prove that the A khatas of their properties are genuine.
Zonal commissioners have asked revenue officials to prepare the notices and issue them to each alleged illegal A-khata holder. The notice will explain why a property will be reverted from A khata to B khata. A khata holder will have the responsibility of furnishing the supporting documents to prove that his/her A-khata is genuine.
Revenue officials have to verify the objections, if any, and take necessary action based on the documents. Reversion to B khata will continue if the khata holder fails to file objections and supporting documents.
BBMP revenue officials should also publish the list of khata holders, whose properties have been reverted to B-khata registry on the notice boards of revenue offices.
Jayaram Raipura, Special commissioner (finance), told TOI that the deadline given to the revenue officials to revert illegal A khatas to B khata had expired. However, the Palike didn’t set a new deadline, but allowed revenue officials to complete the exercise as soon as possible.
As per BBMP data, illegal A khatas have been issued in all eight zones.
Former BJP corporator NR Ramesh had earlier this year alleged that thousands of A khatas had been illegally issued in BBMP limits. A review committee formed to look into the issue asked revenue officers to verify which of these khatas were illegal. During the exercise, the revenue officers listed 9,736 A khatas as illegal.
A Palike officer said the review committee began verifying all the A khatas issued since 2014 as it wasn’t convinced by the data from the revenue officers. The verification exercise revealed that the civic body had issued 45,133 A khatas since 2014.
The committee found that revenue officials had collected development charges illegally for B-khata properties and issued them A khatas. A sum of Rs 898.7 crore has been collected as development charges from the owners of 45,133 properties since 2015-16. Among them, less than Rs 1 lakh was collected from each of the 37,968 properties and it was estimated that most of them were 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.
Currently, zonal teams are vetting all new A khatas. According to a senior BBMP officer, the number of illegal A khatas will increase once the zonal teams verify these 45,133 khatas and those found to be illegal will be reverted to the B-khata registry at a later stage.