Munish Moudgil
BBMP uncovers ₹100 crore property tax leak using e-khata system
Bengaluru
The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike’s (BBMP) flagship e-khata system has uncovered a massive property tax leakage of ₹100 crore from approximately 26,000 properties in the city. The civic body identified the shortfall by randomly auditing e-Khata records.
The e-khata system was launched on October 1, following a mandate by the Karnataka government to digitise property records for all real estate transactions. Despite the hurried rollout, BBMP Special Commissioner (Revenue) Munish Moudgil has been credited with driving its successful implementation. Since its launch, over 5 lakh final e-khatas have been issued within eight months, underlining the effectiveness of Moudgil’s tech-savvy and committed leadership. In total, BBMP has digitized over 23 lakh e-Khatas so far.
As part of the e-Khata process, BBMP now mandates submission of the sale deed, which has created an opportunity to detect under-assessed properties within the existing Self Assessment Scheme (SAS). Under SAS, property owners self-declare the built-up area and pay taxes accordingly—a process often misused to reduce tax liabilities by underreporting property size.
A senior BBMP revenue official revealed that the civic body has developed a plan to plug the leakage. During a pilot audit, BBMP compared the declared property areas under SAS with the actual measurements stated in sale deeds for 26,000 properties. This revealed widespread under-assessment, resulting in a revenue loss of ₹100 crore.
BBMP now plans to issue notices to the identified properties and conduct field inspections to verify the discrepancies. The civic body estimates that around 5 lakh properties may be similarly under-assessed. By addressing this gap, BBMP expects to recover a substantial amount in unpaid taxes.
Tax Collection Update
As of June 29, BBMP has collected ₹2,881 crore in property tax, achieving 45.25% of its ₹6,256 crore target for the financial year. This marks a 67.73% increase over the ₹1,696 crore collected during the same period last year.