Urban India gets under digital mapping radar

Evasion of property tax and construction of illegal buildings will no longer be easy in urban India. With the work on satellite mapping of 158 towns across India gaining momentum, the city managers will soon have easily-accessible evidence to nab tax evadors. Also, digital database and geographical information system (GIS) mapping, being undertaken by Survey of India (SOI), will help various cities preparing their master plans and executing detailed town planning, officials in the urban development ministry told SundayET. The towns include Port Blair in Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Adilabad and Nalgonda in Andhra Pradesh, Dibrugarh and Nagaon in Assam, Arrah and Bhagalpur in Bihar, Bhavnagar and Jamnagar in Gujarat, Shimla and Sonal in Himachal Pradesh, Samba and Rajouri in Jammu and Kashmir, Jamshedpur and Dhanbad in Jharkhand, just to name a few. Though bigger cities have not been funded by the Centre under this scheme, it’s expected that the local governments of those cities will initiate such mapping on their own. Delhi, for example, has launched a pilot programme on GIS mapping in some parts of the city.