Pimpri-Chinchwad: PCMC’s Property Survey Discovers 1,000 New Properties In The City

Mrunal Jadhav

Pimpri, November 16, 2020: The new survey undertaken by the Pimpri-Chinchwad administration to locate properties (used/unused/residential and non-residential lands) in the city has discovered around a thousand new properties within eight days. The Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) in association with a private agency, AurionPro Solution is conducting a survey of different plots and areas in its jurisdiction, in order to verify properties unregistered and falling out of the tax ambit.

The civic administration started the survey on November 5. The survey is held using Geographic Information System (GIS) tagging and drones. The survey began from the Thergaon and Sangvi areas. In just eight days, more than 1,000 new properties have been discovered. It will be conducted in phases across the city.

The team is locating new and unregistered sites with the help of drones, GIS tagging, Google mapping, tax collection and other departments. Property tax is levied at the current rate of residential and non-residential based on actual measurement of income. The tax collection department will issue a notice to the concerned property owner through a bill. Property owners will have to pay the increased tax otherwise the tax of the last 6 years will be recovered, as a penalty.

At present, 5,30,787 properties in the city are registered with the PCMC. Among these, 4,50,168 are residential properties and 49,676 non-residential properties. There are 3,702 industrial properties, 8,838 vacant plots, 15,848 mixed properties and 5,222 other properties. Many new constructions, buildings, sheds, shops are not registered with the civic administration.

The PCMC incurs a loss of crores due to unpaid property taxes every year. Hence, it has undertaken this survey to locate all the properties in the city and recover the property taxes.

Aurinopro Solutions has data of two years of Google Maps — 2016 and 2019. Accordingly, new constructions, incremental constructions, use of residential or non-residents are being investigated. The team consists of trained staff who are assigned this work. This survey will be carried out for three months.

“The city of Pimpri-Chinchwad is expanding day by day. Citizens prefer to live in this city. As a result, urbanisation has increased around the city which includes housing projects, buildings and constructions. New properties are often not recorded– PCMC doesn’t receive property tax of such properties. Hence, to identify such properties and register them, this survey is held. Around 50,000 new properties are likely to come under the property tax jurisdiction. This will add crores to the income of the Municipal Corporation every year,” said Smita Jhagde, Deputy Commissioner, Tax Collection Department.