MC fails to identify house tax defaulters

JALANDHAR: With Rs 53

Updated At : 06:43 AM Mar 04, 2015 IST

Rachna Khaira

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, March 3

With Rs 53.61 crore pending for recoverey as house tax arrears, the Municipal Corporation is in a limbo over tracking down the house tax defaulters in the city as their office records are sans their addresses.

Majority of their record have the name of the person with the name of his locality only. Confused over the issue, MC has now formed a team of 10 people, including two office assistants to physically verify and identify the house tax defaulters.

Nachattar Singh, Superintending Engineer O&M, said as the majority of the records don’t mention the exact addresses; they are unable to identify the house tax defaulters. “However, we have deputed a team of 10 inspectors who will carry out individual inspection in their areas to identify the house tax defaulters. We are expecting to recover at least Rs 30 crore before the end of this financial year,” said Singh.

Also, the newly constituted task force has been embedded with a cumbersome task to differentiate the non defaulters from the massive log of house tax defaulters. While there are around 21,027 residential units who have to clear their house tax dues, around 5,294 commericial units are also placed in the defaulters list from the city.

“However, there are certain discrepancies found in the list. While people have changed their place of residence and businesses long ago, they did not get the change reported in the MC records,” said Singh. He also informed that while a cycle stand owner had closed down his business near Narinder Cinema in 2008, an amount of Rs 6 lakh is due on him till date. Also, while the mobile towers installed on Viva Collage was removed long ago, the house tax worth lakhs is shown pending on the owner due to his negligence as he failed to inform the MC authorities over the changed position of towers,” said Singh. While the MC has to recover around 17.50 crore as principal amount, around Rs 36.11 crore has to be recovered as interests. However, if the state government makes the much awaited announcement of waiving of house tax arrears, the MC would be left with Rs 17.50 crore pending to be recovered before March 31. Also, the MC has to recover an arrear of around Rs 1.10 crore from various government properties, Rs 1.80 crore from Leather Complex, Rs 4.25 lakh from Focal point area, Rs 3 crore from various Court cases, Rs 3.25 crore from Slum area and Rs 4.41 crore due on other properties.