Hyderabad: The state auditor-general has discovered that around Rs 50 crore collected in property tax has gone missing from the account of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation. An audit was done of all circle offices recently, which brought the matter to light.
The tax was paid by citizens via cheques which were deposited into the civic corporation’s account. It is here that the property owner-bill collector nexus was revealed.
According to highly- placed sources, the bill collectors swindled about Rs 50 crore during 2011. Around Rs 25 crore was recovered from the bill collectors by following up on the bounced cheques which were issued by the property owners even though they do not have bank balance. The “invalid” cheques were accepted for a bribe. The involvement of higher authorities cannot be ruled out, sources said. Bill collectors are provided with hand-held machines where the details of defaulters will be integrated with the data in the circle offices.
After collecting the payments, the bill collectors are supposed to enter the details online at the citizen service centre. However, they did not. About Rs 1.5 crore is unaccounted for from each circle office.
Many cheques for property tax bounced
A senior GHMC official in the finance wing told Deccan Chronicle, that property tax payments made by defaulter property owners are automatically updated from hand-held machines provided to the bill collectors. He said in some cases, at the end of the financial year, bill collectors directly deposit the cheques into the GHMC’s bank account.
He said that on several occasions the cheques have bounced and so money would not accrue to the account. Overenthusiastic staff is eager to achieve the targets given and show enhancement in property tax collection, and the corporation will only learn of the cheque-bouncing cases a month after the start of the new financial year. The source denied knowing any details about the missing amount and refused to provide more information.
