‘B’ khata to ‘A’ khata conversion campaign from November 1: Karnataka Deputy CM

Bengaluru: Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar recently announced a 100-day campaign from November 1 to convert ‘B’ khatas to ‘A’ khatas.

“The state government has decided to convert ‘B’ khathas into ‘A’ khathas. This scheme will benefit 15 lakh property owners in Bengaluru. This is a revolutionary scheme and will clean up the property market,” the DCM said after inaugurating the online system for conversion of ‘B’ khata to ‘A’ khata at Vidhana Soudha.

Shivakumar said: “Properties up to 2,000 square meters come under the new scheme. CAD drawings and other documents need to be issued to all the properties which are converting to ‘A’ khata. The campaign will go on for 100 days from November 1. The corporation officials will come to the doorsteps of owners and offer conversion services if the owner of the property registers for conversion online by paying a registration fee of Rs 500”.

“Property owners must pay a fee of 5 percent of the prevailing guidance value for the conversion. The government will have to provide all the basic infrastructure to these areas and hence is charging the fee. A higher fee structure will be fixed after the 100 day period and it will be communicated later,” he said.

“Two helpdesks would be set up in each of the five corporations to facilitate the process. Registrations can be done at Bengaluru One centres also. Property owners don’t have to pay any one any money for this process,” the Deputy CM said.

“The ‘B’ khata owners don’t get permission to build anything on the property until the conversion is done. Multi-storied buildings on ‘B’ khata lands will not be converted into ‘A’ khata properties. The fee for the buildings will be fixed later. After registration, the officials will photograph the property with the owner and upload the photograph to the servers. There is a window to review and rectify this,” he explained.

Uniform Khatha across Bengaluru

Shivakumar said: “For the first time in Bengaluru, we have introduced a uniform ‘A’ khatha system. We have resolved all the issues, with introduction of E-khatas. Digitisation of properties has been done. Such initiatives have not been taken place in the last 50 years. This is the sixth guarantee from our government. We are giving your rights back to you.”

The Deputy CM said, “Of the 25 lakh properties in Bengaluru, 7.5 lakh are ‘B’ khata properties. Another 7 lakh properties are even not eligible for ‘B’ khata. This measure we are initiating will help people get loans easily as banks were not sanctioning loans for ‘B’ khata properties. Only ‘B’ khata lands are getting regularised and we are not looking at regularising buildings constructed on such properties for now.”

He said, “The Central government has praised our initiative to digitise properties and has presented awards to our officials. The Centre sees this initiative as revolutionary. I would like to thank everyone involved in this initiative.”

When asked about declaring roads in private zones as government property, he said, “We consider it a government road even if there is one property there. Many gated communities had not transferred the land meant for the road to the government and we are correcting all that now.”

In response to a question on how much revenue the government was expecting from the conversion of B khatas, the Deputy CM said, “We will know it once the registration of properties is completed.”