VISAKHAPATNAM: Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC) is planning to deploy drones for monitoring building plan deviations and unauthorised constructions.
This initiative aims to identify building violations while potentially increasing revenue by approximately Rs 100 crore.
The city has over five lakh assessed structures across 98 wards in eight zones, including Anakapalli and Bheemili regions. The concept of drone utilisation emerged from discussions at the recent Drone Summit in Amaravati, focusing on identifying unauthorised building floors and deviations.
The initiative will commence as a pilot project in Zone II, covering Madhurawada, Kommadi, and peripheral areas, where numerous violations are reported regularly. The corporation has identified approximately 39,000 vacant plots and plans to implement Vacant Land Tax (VLT) collection to boost revenue.
GVMC commissioner Sampath Kumar said that they decided to use drones to identify building plan deviations. “Earlier, GVMC used to verify illegal constructions and deviations through AutoCAD. Now, with geo-reference and drones, we will integrate both and identify the deviations. We are piloting this practice in one of our eight zones,” he said.
Whenever the deviations or illegal constructions were identified, the GVMC town planning staff would rush to the structures and demolish them. In that process, the staff may act perfectly, or there would be chances of partiality.
Now, the drones would go to the buildings and identify the deviations with photos and video footage before the staff would be pressed into action, sources said. An enforcement team would be set up in every zone. Through this, the GVMC would collect more property tax by reassessing the structures that are not on the radar of the property tax, they said.
