‘Pattana Pragathi’ apart, there is a scurry of activity in the Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) — municipal corporations and municipalities across Telangana with less than a month left for the property tax to be collected for the current financial year of 2019-20.
Director of Municipal Administration N. Satyanarayana has reminded the municipal commissioners and others concerned that the property tax collection has been just 62% for residential properties or ₹416 crore of ₹672 crore expected and just ₹15 crore of ₹172 crore — 15% only from government properties. The DMA has sought 100 % collection as property tax forms the main revenue source for municipal bodies. He pressed for encouraging self-assessment of property tax instead of depending on bill collectors. However, several citizens have not yet either received the property tax notices or the online dashboard does not reflect their properties to make the payments online.
It is not all. The Government had merged about 175 gram panchayats into adjoining municipal bodies and 64 new municipalities were formed taking ULBs to 142. Yet, the seamless integration of records does not seem to have happened because some property records of the erstwhile villages are not showing up on the property tax database.
“We paid the property tax to the gram panchayat last year and submitted all the relevant documents. As there was just one bill collector and he was inundated with several cases, we were told the property tax number will be communicated later but it has not happened. Our property is not showing up online now. Ideally, with our name or house number, the demand should be generated even without PT number,” complains Abhishek, a owner.
New growth areas of Rangareddy like Gandipet, Narsingi and environs saw large housing projects coming up with the administrative machinery unable to keep pace leaving huge gaps. In fact, citizens having properties in places like Kokapet are being told to reach out to the gram panchayat office even after it has been merged with Narsingi municipality!
Official figures show more than 46,000 people going for self-assessment of property tax online of which about 41,000 seem to have got it right but there are many who gave up unable to weave through the maze of documents being asked to be uploaded even while struggling to get the server going during the period. “It is painfully slow or at times some of the attributes suddenly vanish,” says Aditi, another owner.
Senior officials, not willing to be identified, pointed out that municipal elections delayed the processes and teething online issues will be sorted out. Meanwhile, the DMA has asked his officials to send red notices to defaulters, identify top 500 of them and form special teams involving all the municipal sections to mop up the collections.
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