Paying Property Taxes Online - Government of Andhra Pradesh

When my father received a SMS stating that you can pay your property tax online. I was thrilled. Why? My father stays with me in Mumbai and paying property tax for a small flat in  Proddatur Municipality was always a pain. The best was to request someone to pay it on behalf of him which meant it was at the time and convenience of the person we requested. Mind you this is no easy task, asking someone to pay on your behalf.

A quick search on the web got me to Commissioner & Director of Municipal Administration and I it does have an online payment of taxes tab. And boy this was a breeze. As soon as you press the online payment tab you see a neat selection of District | Muncipality | Tax Type. For my purposes I choose Ysr Kadapa (it would be nice if they changed it to read "YSR Kadapa") and then "1014-Proddatur" for Municipality and I chose Tax Type is "Property Tax" (the other option is Water tax)

Once you fill in these details. You are directed to a page (I suspect the direction would be to the respective muncipalities - it my case it went to http://proddatur.emunicipal.ap.gov.in/ web page.

Here you fill in your details. One of them, either the Assessment Number or a Name or the Door Number. I had access to my assessment number so I entered that. However you can search by your name too. Let us say you put the name "Laxmidevamma" (my grannies name!). Then all the entries with that name pop-up, like

Then you can select the Assessment Number (in blue) from the first column. This should lead you to

very specific page related to your property (assuming that you have chosen the correct assessment number link). You need to check the " I have verified the tax details indicated above before proceeding to Pay Bill " and press the "Pay Tax" button. You will be directed to 

 You fill in your mobile number and press "Update & Pay Tax". This should take you to the page where you select the payment gateway. There is only one option as of today, but I am told that there will be many more options available for citizens to use in couple of months to come. 

You have to choose the mandatory "Terms and Conditions" and you are onto the payment gateway.

NB: As I write, 29-Jun-2016, there seems to be problems using chrome browser in redirecting to payment gateway. However firefox browser is fine. All this on my Ubuntu 12.04 machine!

You have two options, "Visa" and "Mastercard" and I am sure there will be many more options soon like wallets (paytm, payumoney) which can only make this process digitally convenient for citizens.

Once you have made the payment a nice receipt is generated and lo you have paid your property tax of a flat in Proddatur sitting in Mumbai. Can things get anything better? Digital India? Digital Andhra Pradesh? Digital Citizen?

I would like to confess that I wrote this article because

1. I did not find a step by step document (similar to this) through google.co.in and 
2. the main reason is when I was running into problems with payment because I was using Chrome browser on my Ubuntu machine I contacted the Director of Muncipal Administration who immediately put me in touch with his technical team which helped me figure out that the payment was smooth sail if I used firefox. I am not sure I can use their names, so I am not naming them! But I thank them for their support.