Jalandhar MC’s property tax recovery scheme gets poor response

Jalandhar, December 31

The One-Time Settlement (OTS) scheme of the Municipal Corporation for the recovery of property tax evoked a poor response. The civic body had recovered an amount of Rs 3 crore in the beginning of this month under the scheme.

However, officials were expecting that the recovery will increase in the coming days. Till December 31, being the last day of the OTS scheme, it was informed that the recovery of tax was still stuck where it was around a month ago.

The scheme was implemented in September to provide a major relief to defaulters who are otherwise supposed to pay 20 per cent penalty and 18 per cent interest on the outstanding principal amount of all previous fiscal years.

Otherwise, over Rs 41 crore property tax has already been recovered so far in this financial year. The target for this financial year is Rs 45 crore. There are around 1.65 lakh taxable properties in the city, including residential and commercial ones.

Under the procedure for taking action against defaulters, inspectors of the property tax wing visit different areas to recover the tax. Defaulters who have not paid the tax are served a notice under Section 112 of the Municipal Corporation Act. They have to file a reply within three days, failing which another notice of sealing the property is served under Section 138 of the Act.