BHUBANESWAR: With less than 30 per cent of addresses covered in the last four-and-a-half years, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) has extended the deadline of the much-hyped digital door numbering (DDN) by a year.
BMC sources said the civic body had identified a total of 2.12 lakh residential and commercial plots to be covered under digital door numbering. However, only around 60,000 of the addresses, around 28 per cent have been covered under the numbering process so far. Accordingly, the deadline has been extended till 31 December, 2024, sources said.
The civic body had signed agreements with two firms - Navayuga Spatial Technologies Pvt Ltd and Zipper Pvt Ltd - in June 2020 for implementation of the project to create a uniform address system for all urban dwelling as well as commercial units using geo-spatial technology and combining them with standard methodologies in street address and door numbering.
However, the project remained stalled till February, 2021 due to Covid-19 pandemic after which it was rolled out on a pilot basis in three wards. BMC had set a deadline of March, 2022 to cover all residential and commercial property under the project.
However, after covering around 50,000 units, the civic body found the DDN of not much help. Soon, sources said, decision was taken to integrate holding tax, trade licence and other utility services numbers to DDN for better use of the initiative.
The BMC has earmarked around `4 crore for digital numbering of all property as well as operation and maintenance of the service for a year. Around `40 lakh will be spent on the project in 2024-25.
DDN contains an alphanumeric code - that will be fixed in all the dwelling and commercial units. The code will act as the first hand identification number and contain information on the exact location of the property with coded details of its address, nearby landmark, sub-road and main road.
The code will be a geo-tagged digital address synced with all civic records which will be integrated with the DDN server and a mobile application.