Lokmat News Network
Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: In a positive development,
the Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar Municipal Corporation (CSMC) exchequer is witnessing a deposition of crores of rupees since the civic administration decided upon taking drastic measures of issuing seizure and auction notice to big and default property-holders who had failed to pay their property tax and water tax dues for the last few years.
Sensation prevailed after the civic administration initiated the action. To evade action the big property-holders started paying their dues and the CSMC treasury has been witnessing crores of rupees in the form of tax for the past many days. The CSMC crossed the collection of Rs 100 crore in the first week of December which was completed last year on December 31.
The civic chief G Sreekanth vowed to enhance the collection by Rs 100 crore more in January and Rs 300 crore by the end of March. The target collection of property tax is Rs 350 crore and water tax is Rs 130 crore for the year 2023-24. The combined collection of property and water tax was Rs 136 crore in 2018-19 and Rs 144.66 crore in 2019-20. Ironically, the CSMC is not offering any concession or discount (2 percent) on dues, then also the collection is excellent.
It may be noted that Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University (Bamu) paid property tax of Rs 19.63 lakh on Thursday; Savitri Mhaske (of Savitri Lawns) paid Rs 5.91 lakh and Javed Patel (of Shabbir Patel School) deposited Rs 5.05 lakh. The civic chief feted Patel and Mhaske in presence of the ward officer (Zone I) Sanjay Suradkar, Avinash Madhi, deputy commissioner Aparna Thete, GST Section’s Rajiv Zhade and others.
Why did the collection increase?
The municipal commissioner has prepared a block of properties and then distributed the blocks containing a list of big property-holders to the recovery teams. The list of big property-holders was prepared by the Assessor and Collector of Tax section. The civic chief then shortlisted the list of property-holders who failed to pay their dues despite serving notices repeatedly for the past many years. The administrator then called a meeting of recovery personnel to understand the problems faced by them on field. Later on, he threatened to take action against the lethargic personnel for poor recovery.
Initially, the collection was between Rs 25 lakh and Rs 50 lakh per day, but the action as per the list worked wonders and the daily collection rose to between Rs 70 lakh and Rs 80 lakh.