Bengaluru: Owners in fix as property dimensions vary in survey

Close to 6,300 of the 2,08,000 properties that have been issued a draft Urban Property Ownership Record (UPOR) card in Bengaluru have reported variations in property dimensions, indicating that the area mentioned in the records and the physical area recorded by officials are different.

As part of the UPOR project, officials conduct a drone survey of every area to collect images of properties. Once they have the images, the surveyors visit the property and physically measure the dimensions. These details are then verified with government records and the draft cards prepared.

Asked why there could be a difference, a senior official from the Revenue Department said that the layouts in the city are not very planned.

“There has been no comprehensive physical survey or measurement of properties in the city, and not everything will be according to papers. We should be able to resolve such issues through the project,” the official said.

Also Read | Opportunities aplenty for organised players in student housing: Colliers

The surveyors also observed that there is a difference in the built-up area on the ground and the area reported to the BBMP for at least 50 per cent of the properties in the city.

“Since it is a self-assessment scheme, many owners just record the approximate area. Seems like many of them have never measured their properties,” another official said.

In a few cases, the property owners may have encroached upon a small portion of the footpath or the drain, while in a few other cases, the neighbours may have encroached upon the property without the owners noticing them, the officials said.

“There might be cases where the owners could have purchased the site and left it vacant for years before construction. In such cases, it is highly possible that the neighbours might have encroached on a part of it. While there is a higher dimension on paper, that might not be the case physically,” one of the officials explained.

He added that the developers of a few layouts also slightly modify the dimensions while marking the sites. “When the site boundaries are drawn up, the developers may end up with a small portion of land that cannot be used for any purpose. In such cases, they either increase the dimension of every site slightly to use up the remaining land or carve out a site by cutting a small area from other sites. Either way, the dimensions on paper and the physical dimensions will be different,” he said.

However, through the process, the officials said that they can get the owners their rightful area only if it is encroached upon, but in other cases, they might have to record the existing physical measurements.

With UPOR, the officials are hoping that these confusions could be resolved. The project aims at creating a comprehensive record of all the properties in urban areas and records parameters such as ownership details, titles and property dimensions.