Shortfall of Rs 91.68 cr recorded in district

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, February 16

Demonetisation and subsequent complete slump in the property sale and purchase has had a major effect on the revenue collection in the district.

Even as the target for the district was not increased for the current financial year from Rs 230 crore last year (despite having achieved Rs 4 crore more), there is so far a shortfall of Rs 91.68 crore. The 12 sub-tehsils of Jalandhar have been able to only reach a mark of Rs 138.32 crore in the first 10 months of the ongoing financial year 2016-17 and are unlikely to make for the huge gap that remains by March end.

How city area fares

The Jalandhar-1 sub-tehsil, which covers most city localities (other than those around Basti areas), has the biggest target of Rs 105 crore. It has so far reached only 65 per cent mark with just a collection of Rs 68.29 crore from registration fee and stamp duty. In terms of percentage achievement, Jalandhar-2 falls even further, having covered only 61 per cent of its target of Rs 57 crore.

Highest and lowest

Adampur has till January this year collected only Rs 2.91 crore out of its target of Rs 7 crore, making lowest of just 41 per cent of the expected income. Nakodar, on the contrary, is closest to its mark, having had a collection of Rs 6.59 crore out of Rs 9 crore (73.2 per cent).

Collector rateslowered, but no boom

Despite the fact that the district administration has been bringing down the collector rates by 15 to 20 per cent every year to encourage investment in realty business, there has been no let-up for the past four years. Rather, the property business has been falling constantly. The district revenue department, which had fetched the state exchequer Rs 298.69 crore in 2012-13, going well above the then target of Rs 275 crore, has not neared the same level ever since.

Navdeep Singh, tehsildar, Jalandhar-2, said, “Demonetisation has taken a huge toll towards the end of the current financial year. While earlier, we used to issue tokens because of rush. But now the footfall has become so less that there are just eight-10 registries on some days.”

The revenue officials said that even as the monthly collection varied between Rs 18-20 crore per month in the last financial year, it was down to Rs 8-10 crore a month around this time.