The ambitious project to map every property in Greater Bengaluru with precise GPS coordinates is progressing slower than planned, facing significant hurdles in coverage and data reliability. Despite concerted efforts by the city's civic bodies, the initiative has managed to cover only a little over a quarter of all properties within the jurisdictional limits.
Slow Progress and the Numbers Behind It
According to officials, the process of tagging properties within the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) with Global Positioning System (GPS) data has been lagging. The special commissioner for revenue, Munish Moudgil, revealed that only about 28% of properties within GBA limits have been covered in the exercise so far. In concrete numbers, this translates to roughly 15.5 lakh properties being geo-tagged.
Breaking down the data, Moudgil explained that the GPS coordinates for 7 lakh properties were recorded directly by corporation staff. The information for the remaining 8.5 lakh properties was submitted by the property owners themselves. The city has a total of 25 lakh properties on official record, with an additional 10 lakh properties estimated to be outside the current GBA net, highlighting the scale of the task remaining.
Data Quality Concerns and Strategic Shift
The quality of the collected GPS data has emerged as a major point of scrutiny for the revenue departments. Authorities are not fully confident in the accuracy of the information gathered so far. "We need to check the quality of the GPS data collected by officials to ensure it is proper. The data provided by property owners could also be wrong," cautioned Moudgil.
Due to these reliability issues, the currently available GPS data is being treated only as base-level information. "Hence, the GPS data is being used as base information. It cannot be considered the final GPS information," Moudgil clarified to the Times of India. This admission points to potential verification drives in the future, which could further extend the timeline for project completion.
Training Workshops to Accelerate Coverage
In a bid to improve both the pace and accuracy of the geo-tagging drive, the revenue departments of multiple Bengaluru city corporations have recently intensified training efforts. The Bengaluru Central and South city corporations organized specialized training workshops for their revenue officials just last Thursday.
The focus of these sessions was on the accurate and efficient implementation of the GPS system on the ground. Rachappa, the additional commissioner for revenue in the South corporation, stated that around 70 revenue officials, including revenue inspectors and tax inspectors, attended the workshop. Many of these officials have prior experience with the exercise.
Following the training, the officials were instructed to commence fieldwork immediately, starting from Friday. This push is part of the GBA's renewed decision to have corporation officials personally cover all 25 lakh recorded properties for GPS tagging, moving beyond reliance on owner-submitted data.
The project was initially announced by the erstwhile Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) in September 2024, with a commitment to record GPS coordinates for all properties across the city. The current efforts represent a critical phase in achieving that goal, aiming to create a definitive digital map of Bengaluru's urban footprint for better governance, tax assessment, and planning.
