Nagpur civic body collects only Rs 40 crore of Rs 1,000 crore property tax target
Despite deploying 400 staff in a drive from August 20 to September 30, the Nagpur Municipal Corporation recovered just Rs 40 crore of the Rs 1,000 crore it had set out to collect.
Every drive the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) has run to recover property tax in Nagpur district has failed so far. Another campaign has now been reported to have fallen short.
Property owners have owed a total of Rs 2,400 crore in tax over the past few years. The NMC had resolved to recover Rs 1,000 crore of it, and the administration put 400 staff in the field for the purpose. But in the drive that ran from August 20 to September 30, the NMC collected only Rs 40 crore.
Under the drive, strict instructions were issued to freeze the bank accounts of defaulting commercial establishments and to cut off their water and sewer connections. To make the recovery succeed at any cost, senior officials had also called a special review meeting of the NMC's tax collectors.
At the meeting, NMC Commissioner Dr Vipin Itankar told the assistant commissioners of all 10 zones, the tax collectors and other staff that every zone office should give recovery of outstanding tax top priority. Even so, apart from the Laxmi Nagar, Nehru Nagar and Mangalwari zones, no zone crossed the Rs 5 crore mark.
Gandhibagh and Dhantoli zones trailed the rest. Despite Commissioner Itankar's strict instructions, the Gandhibagh-Mahal zone recovered only Rs 1.41 crore and the Dhantoli zone just Rs 1.44 crore.
Those familiar with the matter say action could now fall on the assistant commissioners of these two zones. Some believe that political interference during the recovery drive, particularly in the Gandhibagh zone, affected collection there to a considerable extent. In the Dhantoli zone, the assistant commissioner did not take the drive seriously as the situation demanded.
