Housing agency creates app to monitor home construction in Bengaluru

Nodal housing agency, Rajiv Gandhi Housing Corporation Ltd (RGHCL) has developed a simple mobile technology — geographical tagging (geotagging) to monitor construction activities of 10 lakh houses in Bengaluru. Housing department secretary Manoj Kumar Meena said that the projects can be monitored on a real-time basis using geotagging through photographs and videos of houses under construction. Presently, RGHCL is monitoring as many as 10 lakh housing constructions across 279 urban local bodies and 27,000 villages. The centre has taken a cue and implemented a system similar to this across the country. The geo tagging method has also been listed as one of 20 best practices across government departments through the state’s planning and statistics department to motivate others to adopt the technology. RGHCL managing director S Basavaraju said that every construction site is geotagged before work starts under this system. Following this, the local panchayat development officer examines it for physical verification and uploads pictures in real-time on the Indira mane mobile application. This is done at each stage of construction so that beneficiaries can demand subsidies as without geotagged pictures, neither the state nor the centre releases the subsidy amount. On average, the application supports uploading 7,000-10,000 pictures each day. The final disbursal of the subsidy is done by direct benefit transfer (DBT), which is linked to the Aadhaar card. The housing department launched a call center named Spandana, wherein it receives around 2,000 requests every day for registering different complaints, including delays in the release of funds. Image Source Also read: Karnataka real estate industry struggling with labour deficit, high-cost Also read: Bengaluru Development Authority doubles property tax