BENGALURU: A small section of Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) property owners have been facing issues while paying taxes for their sites or houses online. Online payments are only being accepted from this financial year and the system was made operational on Wednesday. Those who tried to pay online faced various issues. These problems included the inability to register, high property tax amount displayed, property ID or mobile number not accepted. In five days since online payments started, 2,108 transactions were successful and a tax amount of Rs 81, 60,295 has been collected, while 67 failed.
An engineer of Bharat Electronics S Lakshman Singh, who owns a 30x40 sq ft site at Komaghatta, said, “When I accessed the portal, the amount to be paid showed as Rs 2,248. This is almost three times the amount I need to pay. I tried to pay twice, on May 16 and May 17, but the problem persisted, so I did not pay.”
Filmmaker Abhaya Simha, who owns a 40X60 sq ft site in Komaghatta, was unable to register on the portal (https://propertytax.bdabangalore.org) as it said a mobile number was not provided for his property. “The irony is that I was trying to add my phone number to my property ID but there was no way I could do it. Though there is a helpline number provided on the portal, no one answers it,” he said.
In the case of AS Surya Kiran, who owns a 30x40 sq ft BDA site in Challaghatta village, the portal refused to accept his property ID. “An official asked me to get back after 15 or 20 days,” he said. When revenue officers were contacted, they did not answer calls. A senior BDA official said the complaints largely pertained to Vijayanagar BDA office. People facing problems could email to systemsmanager-bda@ka.gov.in directly, he said.