Guwahati: The Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) is unable to recover the pending property tax of Rs. 250 crore from the over two lakh residents with holding numbers, so it has delegated to the public the responsibility of conducting property assessments and connecting property holding numbers to electricity consumer numbers.
The technique has been used to filter tax defaulters.
The municipality has requested residents to pay outstanding property taxes by January 1 to do this, the civic body has partnered with the Assam Power Distribution Company Limited (APDCL) to prevent energy disconnection.
According to statistics provided by GMC, over 3 lakh electrical subscribers of whom over 2 lakh have property ownership numbers are located within the jurisdiction of the local body. The GMC representative said that the remaining electrical users had never paid property taxes because they have no property holding number.
In addition, just about 83,000 of the more than two lakh households with property holding numbers paid the taxes in the previous year and the rest haven’t.
The GMC mayor Mrigen Sarania stated that the civic organisation has been suffering a significant loss in revenue collection for years and has therefore adopted a user-friendly platform that enables the citizens to evaluate their properties, create holding numbers, if they do not already have them and pay their debts. He acknowledged that the self-service system was implemented because the GMC lacked the manpower to survey and collect outstanding debt in all 60 wards.