20,000 properties pay less than Rs 1,000 in property tax

Lokmat News Network

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar:

Nearly 20,000 properties in the city are being charged less than Rs 1,000 in property tax. Despite such a low tax burden, most property owners still fail to pay. Over the past 20 years, the municipal corporation has not conducted any reassessment of properties. In places where tin-sheet houses existed two decades ago, multi-storey buildings now stand, yet these properties continue to attract less than Rs 1,000 in annual tax. Neither the administration nor the ruling authorities have paid serious attention to this issue.

According to records of the Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar Municipal Corporation (CSMC), the city has 3.19 lakh registered properties. However, around 40,000 to 50,000 properties are still not recorded with the corporation. Even open plots are taxable, but this fact is often ignored by civic officials, employees, and plot owners alike.

Every year, the administration makes major efforts to recover property tax dues, but with limited success. During the financial year 2025–26, 1.42 lakh property owners paid tax, generating revenue of Rs 210.82 crore. Since the corporation waived 95 per cent of the interest on overdue tax, an additional Rs 60–70 crore was recovered. However, 1.77 lakh property owners did not pay any tax during the previous year.

Several reasons are cited for the weak property tax recovery system, but one major factor that has now emerged is the absence of reassessment. About 20,000 properties are taxed at less than Rs 1,000 annually. Some of these may genuinely belong to slum settlements, but in many other cases large buildings may now exist on those plots.

Major surgery will be needed

Mayor Sameer Rajurkar said that property tax forms the backbone of the municipal corporation’s finances, and substantial reforms will be required in the future.

“In some places, minor corrective measures may suffice, but elsewhere major surgery will be unavoidable. Municipal corporations much smaller than ours have adopted a capital value-based tax system, and their revenue collection is higher than ours. Because of this model, they also receive larger amounts of welfare funding from the Central and State governments,” said the mayor.

Reassessment will have to be done

Deputy Commissioner Vikas Navale questioned how a property tax amount could remain below Rs 1,000 for years.

“How can property tax be less than Rs 1,000? This has continued for years. Therefore, all such properties will have to be reassessed. At present, work is underway to identify new properties and bring them into the tax net,” said Navale.