Wednesday, 19 October 2022 | PNS | DEHRADUN
The Municipal Corporation of Dehradun (MCD) has issued notices to 82 government buildings for not depositing property tax.
The corporation’s tax section has recently started preparing a list of property tax defaulters on the order of municipal commissioner Manuj Goyal and has even sent notices to about 10,000 property tax defaulters in eight wards. Though the corporation has been regularly appealing and warning the general public to deposit property tax, the government departments were usually given leverage in submitting tax despite the fact that an amount of Rs 12-15 crore is pending on several properties of the government in Dehradun.
The senior MCD officials have also expressed their disappointment on the matter several times stating that the government has been directing the corporation to work on increasing its financial resources when on the other hand, most of the government departments unnecessarily delay the submission of property tax of their respective government buildings every year. The officials said that property tax collection is one of the main sources of income of the corporation and despite several reminders, most of the government departments fail to deposit tax on time. According to the officials, the pressure of providing necessary facilities has increased on the corporation after the number of wards increased from 60 to 100 but sources of income are still limited. They said that the corporation does not even get paid by the department concerned for erecting electric poles on MCD’s land but they have to pay the electricity bills for street lights installed on the poles.
The corporation has collected the property tax of Rs 15 crore in the past eight months and to ensure the tax collection exceeds the collection of at least Rs 40 crore, the officials have started issuing notices to government buildings as well. MCD sent notices to 82 buildings on Tuesday that include the SIIDCUL office at Sahastradhara Road, Uttarakhand Power Corporation Limited (UPCL) residential colony, the undertaking office and guest house of the Chief General Manager of Telecom Department of the Government of India, assistant engineer’s office of Public Works Department (PWD), Chief Conservator office of Forest Department on Rajpur Road, Regional Transport Office (RTO),
Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change at Subhash Road, LIC Building at Connaught Place and the Income Tax commissioner’s office at Subhash Road. The municipal commissioner said that the MCD will continue to send notices to defaulters and take action for unnecessary delay in tax submission. The mayor Sunil Uniyal ‘Gama’ has also directed the tax section to take all necessary steps to increase the recovery of property tax.
