Governance

Ulsoor, Indiranagar, Vasanthnagar and Rest House Road! Six incidents of attacks on women in Bengaluru reported in the media in the last 20 days. The attackers in all the cases were either a pair of men on bikes or in groups of four in cars. In most cases, the women were in jeans or western clothing but in one of the cases, a woman attired in Salwar Kameez was also subject to attack. In the cases where the women retaliated by slapping the attackers, the latter became further infuriated and became more violent. In fact, in the incident at Indiranagar,…

Here below is the simple, safe and sure declaration of paying property tax.1. Purchase an application at the area Revenue office, priced at Rs.5/- one each for different properties (In case of more properties - one for each corporation number)2. Purchase one Hand Book priced at Rs.20/-3. Demand an Appendix to hand book (Zone Classifications) of your area.4. Go through the same calmly and understand the columns.5. Measure your property in British system (Feet / Inches) - Note down the dimensions.6. Differentiate the area as per year of construction, if constructed at different periods.7. Differentiate the area as per the…

The Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagar Palike(BBMP) website now has the handbook of property tax and list of helpline centers (where one can go and pay the taxes). Illustration: Narasimha Vedala The Taxes can be paid at the Citizens Service Centre at the BBMP headquarters and the helpline centres (usually the ward offices in various locations) and specified banks. BBMP has not provisioned for citizens paying at the Bangalore One centres. They explain that it is because people do not give correct details of their property. “Now we will check if all the details are fine and cheaters can be caught,” says…

The property tax collection by BBMP for the year 2008- 2009 has been in the confused state.It started from changing to CVS from SAS,than to UAV and latest being UAV with old SAS rate. Now, if one calculate there is not much change in the revised tax if the building is used for residential purposes comes under the same zone, but there are instances of increase of nearly 45% if there is a jump to next higher zone (E to D) - please refer to the chart below for an example. We from the Citizen Action Forum and Jayanagar 5th…

  Now here is an Example Suppose you have a property in the city that fell into tax Zone E, your tenanted area is 450 sq ft and self occupied area is 950 sq ft then following will be your tax calculation: Gross Unit Area Value - Rs 22200.00 Depreciation Amount -  Rs 5328.00 (the depreciation is of 24 per cent) Net Unit Area Value - Rs 16872.00 Property Tax - Rs 3374.40 Cess (24 per cent) - Rs 809.86 Total Property Tax - Rs 4184.26 Rebate of 5 per cent - Rs 3975.00 (If paid in full on or…

We all often read in newspapers about various raids that the Lokayukta of Karnataka does on various officers and catches them red-handed taking bribes. And most of us wonder how do they get to know of this. If one of us comes across an officer who readily accepts bribes, how do we tell the Lokayukata about that? Where do we complain? Will the Lokayukta consider the small complaints that do not involve a one crore-rupees scam?Well, the answer is yes. And filing a complaint is not as daunting as it may seem, considering our collective experience of access to government…

On 1st December, B N Vijay Kumar, MLA(BJP), Jayanagar constituency (which includes Jayanagar and JP Nagar), distributed pamphlets to all residents of his constituency asking them to inform him if they find vacant sites which is not protected by either the BBMP or BDA. Vijay Kumar says that he often gets complaints from his constituents about unused government land being misused or getting encroached upon. To verify the complaints, he went around his constituency and found that there were a lot of unprotected land sites owned by government or city corporation, which were not fenced or marked, near BBMP parks,…

Voter registration for Bengaluru's MNC employees is now as simple as a walk to their cafe!VoteDeIndia has been conducting such drives at MNC campuses throughout Bangalore, most recently at Cognizant and Sasken. VoteDeIndia is volunteer, non-profit and non-partisian initiative run by a group Bangaloreans from the Infotech sector to increasing voter (electorate) turnout. The drive, which started with on-campus registrations in September, has been helping non-registered voters to register, so that they become eligible to get a voter ID. So far, VoteDeIndia has been successful in getting around 1000 members to sign up. VoteDeIndia helps individuals in: (1) Accurate identification…

Last week, the Election Commission announced that producing voter identity card is mandatory in all future elections. I talked to a revenue officer from BTM layout. He confirmed it would be mandatory to have photo identity card from next election onwards. Revenue offices in the respective areas have setup facility to get the photo identity cards. This is where one needs to get the cards. List of assembly constituencies and ward numbers are given in: http://www.bangalorevoterid.org/pdf/Delimited%20constituencies.pdfRevenue offices details are available in: http://www.bangalorevoterid.org/pdf/BMP-RV-E-AUG03-P-401.pdf.pdf In the past few elections, one could show any valid identity proof at the polling booth, as long…

What’s in a name? Plenty of politics… looks like.Anytime soon, Bangalore is expected to be officially christened Bengaluru. But the issue is now stuck with the Union Home Ministry. The name Bengaluru, though, appears to be catching up fast, with several major corporate houses and television channels adopting the new name. The official nod for the change in name has, however, not been given yet. Also, the confusion over how to spell the new name (‘Bengalooru’ or ‘Bengaluru’) still prevails. The Centre reportedly has no objection to permitting the change of 12 of the 13 names sent across by the…