Thiruvananthapuram: The Local Self Government Department (LSGD) has traced around 1.43 lakh buildings in the urban areas of the state, which had evaded taxes as they existed undetected to the authorities.

Subsequently, LSGD calculated that these buildings owed ₹393.92 crore as taxes and fines to the government, and collected ₹108.92 crore from them. The dues now remaining are ₹285.01 crore. Following these measures, the annual building tax revenue of 93 urban local bodies in the state would increase by ₹41.48 crore.

The ‘hidden’ buildings were detected during a year-long ‘purification’ drive implemented by the LSGD to include details of these buildings in the ‘K-Smart’ application developed by the Information Kerala Mission (IKM) for local bodies and, through K-Smart, in the official records of the local bodies.

The drive found that of the 44,85,891 buildings for which records existed in the 87 municipalities and six city corporations in the state, taxes were collected from only 36,55,124 buildings.

Taxes were not received from 8,30,737 buildings as the data regarding them was not accurate in the ‘Sanchaya’ software, which was earlier used for tax collection. Details regarding the 1.43 lakh buildings were obtained by verifying the data from ‘Sanchaya.’

The main issues related to the data included wrong information, repetition, failure to delete details regarding demolished buildings from records and junk data. Similarly, some new buildings that lacked LSGD numbers were found to be functioning without paying taxes, though they had received electricity and water connections.

The decision to verify building tax data was taken by LSGD Minister M B Rajesh, who convened several meetings of the heads and secretaries of municipalities and city corporations. Soon, a 30-member team from IKM brought the data up-to-date through the K-Smart software, with Special Secretary T V Anupama and Principal Secretary S Sambasiva Rao leading the initiative. Alongside, City Corporation and Municipality employees verified the tax registers in the local bodies and conducted field visits.

Kochi leads
Kochi Corporation leads in the number of buildings brought into the tax net during the drive – 27,578. Among them, 16,168 buildings were newly detected during the drive and the remaining 11,410 were not included in the corporation records owing to erroneous data.