Special NMC drive after Diwali to recover property tax

To mop up more revenue, the Nagpur Municipal Corporation will embark on a special drive to recover property tax from over five lakh
defaulting after the festival season, sources at Nagpur Municipal Corporation said on Wednesday.

"At present, NMC has directed all the zone officials to prepare a list of property tax defaulters. The property owners who have unpaid taxes of Rs 5,000 and more will be issued notices by the respective zonal offices on priority basis," officials said. They said that the intensive recovery drive has been postponed only due to the festival season.

The NMC standing committee has set a revenue target of Rs 130 crore for the property tax department for 2009-10. Till date (September 16) the property tax department has recovered only Rs 17 crore property tax. This amount is Rs 2 crore more than the tax recovered during the similar period last year.

As part of the first phase of this recovery drive, NMC has begun an exercise to revaluate or reassess tax on 1.80 lakh properties in 23 of the 75 wards across 10 zones in the city. As per the new policy, property tax is being calculated on the basis of rental value or the annual letting value of the property. Thus the revaluation exercise essentially involves the revision of standard rent of properties in a particular area.

The corporation has categorised non-commercial properties depending on their use while calculating their rent, a senior property tax official said. "We will complete the revaluation of over 1 lakh properties in these 23 wards and will be able to issue them notices under relevant sections of the CNC Act. The civic body has already completed the survey and revaluation of 50,000 properties," officials said.

Officials of the property tax department also said that the department is facing a severe staff crunch since the last few months. Of the 340 approved posts, only 193 employees have been deputed to the property tax department to complete the target given by NMC. Even among these, over 100 employees are presently engaged in the state assembly election duties, which has forced NMC to slow down the recovery work. However, once the elections and the festival season ends we will start special drives to complete the target, one official said.

The department had recovered Rs 91.54 crore as property tax in 2007-08 while the figure was Rs 115.15 crore in 2008-09. "In 2009-10 too the department expects to cross the Rs 100 crore mark as against the target of Rs 130 crore," the official added.