Model Town: Survey finds 50 pc violations

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, May 17

In the first-ever GIS survey conducted to check the compliance of property tax payers in two sectors in the city, including the high-end Model town area, over 50 per cent commercial properties here were found to have not paid taxes since 2011.

Municipal Commissioner Dr Basant Garg said that after the GIS survey was completed around three months ago, the civic body has planned to scrutinise the property tax violators in the Model town area.

According to data received by the MC, out of the 1,550 commercial properties falling in the Sector 10 area of the city, only 764 properties had paid the property tax till date. In Sector 11 also, comprising the Model Town area, only 876 commercial properties, out of the 1,110, had paid the property tax.

“We are soon going to send them notices for recovery to be calculated from 2011. Also, I have directed to conduct this survey in other sectors of the city as well and to also include residential properties in the next phase,” said Dr Garg.

He said soon a project management unit (PMU) was going to be set up under the smart city project which would monitor and implement the GIS on the ground level. The PMU would be set up at an estimated cost of Rs 30 to Rs 40 lakh.

“So far, we have finished the survey and have freezed the property details in our database. The PMU with the new software will continue to add new properties in the database and also provide a unique identity number (UIN) to each property,” said Dr Garg.

Though the civic body had provided UINs to each of the 2.5 lakh households in the city, a majority of these numbers got erased with time. Now, the MCJ was planning to introduce a uniform pattern of number plate to be installed outside each house with the UID number printed on these.