The court instructed that the corporation must commence the process of digitally archiving and maintaining all old records, linking them with other documents and ensuring their availability in digital format.
The Karnataka High Court has directed the BBMP’s chief commissioner to coordinate with the principal secretary of the e-governance department in developing a system for providing plan approvals, khata certificates, tax payment receipts, self-assessment forms, and other relevant documents in digital format and give access to all the digitized documents to the BBMP officers who are empowered to take punitive measures under the BBMP Act, against violations of plan approvals and unauthorized constructions.
The court has asked to ensure, that access to these records must exclusively be granted through user credentials, including a username and password, to prevent any third parties from accessing them.
Related Case:
The case pertains to a petition filed by Aslama Pasha, questioning an order passed against him in relation to the construction of a building on the grounds that the petitioner had failed to produce the sanctioned plan.
The petitioner had claimed that there existed a sanctioned plan but there was a delay in its production before the BBMP authorities.
When the BBMP itself possesses the documents in its custody, it cannot call upon the citizen to furnish such documents, and cannot draw any adverse inference for non-production as was done in the present case, the court said, while observing that if the documents were not produced nothing prevented the BBMP officials from examining its own records, as after all the civic body is one single entity comprising all those departments, and hence access to all the documents should be available to all authorized officers and one department of the BBMP cannot claim that it does not possess certain documents related to a property as they were issued by another department.
As there could be documents relating to a particular property available with different departments of the State government, the BBMP and the e-Governance Department of the government will have to map and tag all such documents with the BBMP’s property data, the court added.
The municipal corporation has begun the work and has issued directives to scan the documents and make them accessible online.
We have already begun the process of digitization and the same will be informed to the court. On the other hand, under the Namma Swattu programme, property documents will delivered to the owners on their mobile phones.
BBMP Chief Commissioner, Tushar Giri Nath
BDA to follow the digitization path:
In a similar move, with an aim to make the office more people friendly, Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) will soon start the digitization of all records like land acquisition records, civic amenity sites, allotment of sites, khatas, land records, and other documents.
This move will help in increasing the time efficiency of the department and fast-tracking the system, people usually go to the BDA to secure or transfer khata, which is a time taking time process. While the digitization process is yet to start, BDA Commissioner Mr. N. Jayaram has directed officials to issue khata in three days and transfer khata in 24 hours.
