Church Street, MG Road shops bear ID No.; officials clueless

BENGALURU: Several

shopping establishments

and

eateries on M G Road

,

Church Street

and

St Marks Road

in the central business district are suddenly sporting a white and yellow board bearing a nine-digit sequence, but neither the managements of the establishments nor the

Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike

(BBMP) seem to be aware of its significance.

Besides the number sequence, the boards also bear the address of a website. Managers and owners of the commercial establishments say they neither know what the boards mean, nor who put them up. Ditto with the BBMP. At least 13 such properties sport these boards.

“I'm not sure what it is,” said an owner of an eatery on Church Street. “I assume it’s something like geo-tagging. It came up overnight some time ago and I was never informed about it.” One store manager on MG Road revealed that it was the digital door ID for his establishment, and it had been installed by the BBMP a few weeks ago.

However, when TOI checked with BBMP officials, they too said they were clueless on who had erected the boards or what the signage meant. The mystery only deepened when Manoj Rajan, BBMP special commissioner, confirmed that it was not part of DiGi7, the digital door numbering project introduced in March. Rajan too couldn’t say what the boards signified.

Dr Ashok, joint commissioner (east), and officials in the revenue department were clueless on who put the boards up or what they meant.

The BBMP’s DiGi7 project, announced in mid-March, is touted as an indigenous project developed in-house by the BBMP’s IT department at a cost of Rs 83,000 by former commissioner N Manjunath Prasad. The digital ID framework is based on the GIS-enabled property tax information system that was created after mapping all properties within BBMP limits. While it was set to go live with 19 lakh properties being mapped in April, it is yet to be officially rolled out.

No information could be gathered from the website mentioned on the boards.