Hundreds of Bengaluru residents get tax notices for not including car parking area! Here's what happened

Mint

7 days ago

A simple technical glitch in Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike's e-Khata has left homeowners fuming, as hundreds have received show-cause notices.
E-Khata is an electronic property certificate that maintains ownership information in an online database and has been made mandatory since 1 July 2025.
According to a Times of India report, homeowners in Bengaluru received a show-cause notice for not including the car parking area when mentioning the carpet size of their property.
'A notice has been issued demanding tax for the car parking slot in my apartment,' Richmond Town resident Rajat Rao told TOI.
'What is weird is that BBMP has unilaterally decided the dimensions of the parking lot, without even cross-checking documents or physically inspecting the apartment,' he added.
However, the civic body officials said that the issue was triggered by a software check recently introduced by the BBMP's new system, Kauvery. The software automatically flagged any mismatch in property area details between e-khata and EPID.
The TOI report said that the worst affected are the residents of Shantinagar assembly constituency, where the e-khata system was first introduced before its rollout in other parts of the city.
Homeowners are demanding that Bengaluru district in-charge minister D K Shivakumar intervene and end their harassment.
'The bureaucrats piloting the e-khata project and deputy chief minister D K Shivakumar should have some clarity on this. Why should we suffer and be forced to prove our credentials when they cannot streamline the system?' affected property owners asked.
Calling it 'harassment,' they also questioned why handout notices were being issued 'after issuing e-khatas,' especially when the discrepancies in property tax declarations could have been pointed out earlier.
'When I raised the issue, the official suggested I appeal with BBMP's e-court. Now this is another sham. I am supposed to appeal for something that I'm not even responsible for, but has been wrongly accused of,' said Vijay Kumar, a Yelahanka resident.
Another Bengaluru resident, Sudhindra Halappa Gowda, asked why they were being tortured so much. 'What about all the bureaucrats and politicians who are not even paying taxes? They are not being penalised. Why is the middle class suffering?'
A senior BBMP official defended the system, saying that the staff doesn't manually input anything. 'The software picks up discrepancies. If people have entered wrong details in their e-khatas, how are we to blame?'
He clarified that the car parking area is never explicitly mentioned in the sale deed in terms of size; only the super built-up area is. 'Citizens have ignored this all along, but parking space is also a property, and tax is due on it.'
BBMP special commissioner (revenue), Munish Moudgil, told TOI that they intended to issue notices only in case of properties where the variation was more than 5%. 'For those under 5%, we didn't intend to send any alerts.'
However, Moudgil said, due to a technical glitch on the part of NIC, mass emails were sent out even to those who were not at fault.
'These affected residents can appeal, and we will resolve the issue promptly,' he said.