House tax defaulters may lose water connection

Sandeep Rana

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 21

Residents who failed to pay their property tax despite repeated notices will have to lose their water supply connection. As many as 200 such defaulters were served a notice today.

The local Municipal Corporation (MC) has identified total about 8,000 defaulters with a total dues of Rs7 crore. They are now being served notice directing them to clear their dues in a month or lose water connection.

If they fail to pay in the given time, their details will be forwarded to the public health wing of the engineering department, which will cut their water connection.

“Today, we served notice to 200 house tax defaulters asking them to pay or lose water connection. Our purpose is not to remove the connection, but to force the defaulters to cough up as a huge amount was pending against them for a long time,” said Anil Kumar Garg, Additional Commissioner, MC, who heads the property tax branch.

He said daily 34-40 persons were still coming to them to pay tax even as the last date expired on July 31.

Besides, an equal number of commercial tax defaulters are being served property attachment notice. The city has a total of 1.06 lakh residential and commercial tax payers. Nearly 41,000 property owners are either fully or partially exempted from paying the levy.

“The house tax dues exist since 2013-14. Some have paid a part of the tax while some have not paid at all. Some have dues of a few years. It includes penalty,” said an official concerned.

Officials said they had collected Rs3 crore more tax than what they had earned till October 21 in the last fiscal. Though in the last fiscal too the civic body had started the process of snapping water connection of about 5,100 defaulters in March, it could not be undertaken fully due to the Covid-induced lockdown.

It will be for the first time in the city when a property tax defaulter will lose a water connection.

In figures

• 8,000 residential property tax defaulters
• 200 get notice — pay or lose water connection
• Rs7 crore residential property tax dues
• 8,000 commercial tax defaulters
• 1.06 lakh residential and commercial taxpayers in city

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