Amritsar civic body to identify property tax defaulters

Charanjit Singh Teja

Amritsar, June 13

Amritsar Municipal Corporation authorities have decided to identify property tax defaulters and press them to recover the tax.

MC Commissioner Harpreet Singh has asked officials to take stern action against the defaulters. On the directions of MC Commissioner Harpreet Singh, a meeting of Property Tax Department officials was conducted by Additional Commissioner Surinder Singh. The meeting was attended by Assistant Commissioner Vishal Wadhawan, Superintendent (Property Tax) Davinder Singh Babbar, Jaswinder Singh, Harbans Lal, Pardeep Kumar, Dharminderjit Singh and inspectors of the MC.

The key agenda of the meeting was to enhance the recovery of property tax. In the meeting, Additional Commissioner Surinder Singh stated that the recovery of property tax for financial year 2024-25 and its arrears has been hampered due to the Lok Sabha elections as the staff was busy in election-related works.

He issued directions to the recovery staff that now the elections are over and staff should focus on recovery for the current financial year. He asked officials of the MC property tax department and employees to start a drive to identify the defaulters of property tax for the previous years so that action could be taken against them. After identifying the tax defaulters of financial year 2023-24 and previous years, the MC will issue them notice and seal their buildings.

Additional Commissioner Surinder Singh issued the directions to fix month-wise target for the recovery staff so that targets fixed for the current financial year can be met. In the meeting, the recovery staff assured that they would make efforts to improve the recovery and meet all the targets. MC officials claimed that property tax is one of the major revenue-generating sources and development and other works of the MC would suffer in case they fail to meet the recovery targets.