(Semi) Automating NA Assessment and Recovery

See the Data of NA Assessment here below:-

https://five.epicollect.net/project/42d-na-assessment-and-recovery-kinwat

Section __ of MLRC – All Land revenue to be paid to the govt(?)

Applicable Legal Provisions

Section 42D – NA assessment and Recovery over those lands situated within 200m of Gaothan boundary either urban or rural – residential, Commercial or Industrial!

Section 169(1) – The arrears of land revenue due on account of land shall be a paramount charge on the land and on every part thereof and shall have precedence over any other debt, demand or claim whatsoever, whether in respect of mortagage, judgment-decree, execution or attachment, or otherwise howsoever, against any land or the holder thereof.

There are 3 steps to this process

1. Survey & Data Collection
2. Processing the Data
3. Issuing the Recovery notices

Background

The Talathis and Circle Officers used to collect land revenue only in those cases where the land was used for non-residential purposes like Commercial shops – kirana stores, hotels, dhabas, hardware shops, Industrial – stone crushers, dal mills, rice mills, cotton mills, sugar factory, govt establishments like Nagarpalika, MSEB, Telecom towers etc

However residential NA use was not assessed and taxed. Section 42 A, B,C and D of MLRC 1966 talks about procedure for NA permission and provisions thereof. In brief these sections say that, as long as NA use is done in compliance with Development plan (for urabn area ie Section 42A & B) and Regional Plan (for Rural area ie Section 42C) and required dues is paid (ie Conversion tax, NA assessment and Nazarana where needed), no separate permission is needed. Thus There has been a paradigm shift from prior permission to Deemed Permission, in line with ease of doing business trend.

However the person willing to change the use of land from Agriculture to Non-Agricultural purpose still has to take building permission from the local Planning Authority (Municipal Corporation, Municipal Council or Gram Panchayat accordingly). And such Planning Authority has to intimate the Revenue authority about such land change use and get the NA assessment done from the latter. But because of lack of such communication mechanism or failure to enforce this provision, often there is hardly any data with revenue authority of such change in NA use.

Anyways in Kinwat & Mahur, a survey was conducted specifically to collect the information of change in land use in those survey numbers (ie area lying outside Gaothan) which are within 200m purview of Gaothan boundary. A workshop was taken of revenue functionaries and basic concepts were explained to them. They were also given demo of the Data Collection app to be used for such survey and data collection work.

Let’s go step by step

1. Survey and Data Collection – Kinwat Nagar Palika’s population is around 35000 and households are 8000 approximately. Most of the old households lye in Gaothan (ie traditional inhabited part of the city/town or village). However over last few decades there has been expansion of habitations outside the gaothan owing to population growth, economic growth, addition of new Govt offices and buildings etc. And hence the peripheral Agricultural lands were used up for such development and expansion. And for such change in land use, the State Government has prescribed a procedure discussed briefly in the beginning.

Now we specifically surveyed those properties lying outside the Gaothan but within 200m of it. Gaothan area already demarcated on the Revenue map and taking it as reference 200m periphery was calculated using Fields Area Measure app. The Revenue functionaries went house to house collecting data with a pre defined survey questionnaire (annexure attached). Instead of using pen, paper and pad, we equipped our Talathis with a ODK called EpiCollect Five – a Powerful robust reliable field data collection tool (developed by Oxford University). Training and workshop for using the app was already conducted. Everyday the Circle Officers with their team of Talathis, Kotwals plan that day’s survey, enter the data on the app which could be viewed real time on the EpiCollect5 admin dashboard. The beauty of this software is that we can see the data collected on the map thus giving us an idea of how much area has been surveyed. 

Once the data has been collected, it can be downloaded as Excel sheet.

2. Data Processing – the data collected (NA use area, permission etc) now has to be worked upon. Using the simple forumlae for calculating the NA assessment, such calculations can be worked out in the excel sheet.
   1. THe standard rate of NA assessments for different areas and for different purposes (residential, commercial, Industrial etc) is fixed by the government. For Kinwat Nagar Palika the standard rates of assessment is as follows
      1. Rs 1.28/Sq mt for Residential
      2. Rs 2.56/Sq mt for commercial &
      3. Rs 1.88/Sq mt for Industrial
   2. And NA Assessment involves following components
      1. Base NA Assessment – Area in Sq mt x Std Rate
      2. Conversion tax – 5 x Base NA Assessment (multiplying factor 9 for rural area)
      3. Arrears – No of years passed since building constructed w/o paying conversion tax x Base NA Assessment
3. Generating the Land Revenue recovery notices – Recovery notices in bulk can be generated through Mail Merge option in Microsoft office. Mail merge is a simple but very useful feature in MS Office. Basically a repetitive tasks like generating invoice or issuing letters in bulk in particular template is easy with Mail merge.

One big positive fallout of this activity is the Building permission fees due to Nagarpalika can be recovered, as 95% of the houses constructed are without building permission from the planning authority. The data to be shared to Nagarpalika.