State govt. introduces auto conversion of land use as per master plan in GBA area

In a big reform, the State government has introduced auto-conversion of land use in the notified Master Plan area within the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) area. Now, one can directly apply for a plan approval as per the Master Plan, and conversion will be done as part of the process automatically. A new software to facilitate the same was launched by Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda on Saturday.

“With the enabling provision of auto conversion, GBA now has the legal framework to convert B-Khata properties into A-Khata,” Mr. Byre Gowda said, adding that this will help lakhs of property owners who have purchased unauthorised sites in the past. Getting A Khatha will add legal strength to such sites, enable them to obtain loans, increase the value of their property, ease transactions, and approvals.

GBA is now running a one-time scheme to issue A-Khata to B-Khata properties, if the site owner pays 5% of the guidance value. Deputy Chief Minister and Bengaluru Development Minister D.K. Shivakumar recently said that the GBA had received 1.2 lakh applications, of which 45,000 had been rejected.

Reducing discretion 

Earlier, even lands falling within the Master Plan required separate conversion, despite the concept of “deemed conversion.” This process typically took 4 to 6 months and often led to delays, harassment, corruption, and increased costs due to middlemen, Mr. Byre Gowda himself acknowledged.

“The auto conversion of land is intended to help legal, faster, and easier development of land. Thus, help common people to buy affordable sites. Ease of governance and compliance is hoped to reduce the cost and time of land development. This will benefit not only residential development, but is also available to industrial and other uses as permitted in the Master Plan. With this reform, the Revenue Department is hoping to plug bad governance and corruption at the source itself,” he said.

“By bringing online transparent time-bound and automatic processes, discretion is reduced. All these steps, along with E-Khata and integration of different records, will reduce litigation and bring greater guarantee to property ownership,” he further said.