Bengaluru: The BBMP, which is having teething problems with its online property tax payment site, could not fix them on the second day as well after it introduced the portal ‘Palike Sampanmoolana’ on Monday.
Many who tried to pay their tax on Tuesday complained that the site did not open or the link to the revised tax zone did not appear even on entering the PID number.
The civic agency, which soon woke up to the errors on the tax portal, later published some instructions on its home page to ease the process.
Maintaining that such initial glitches were inevitable in the transition from manual to online collection of property tax, IT adviser to the BBMP, Seshadri said problems with the software had been ironed out. “There will be no more issues with it. This is a sustainable method of paying the tax,” he stressed.
Many also found it difficult to pay their tax at Canara bank, saying it was not a user- friendly alternative to the online portal. “Now we have to visit both the BBMP help centres and the bank or take the assistance of revenue officials to fill up challans,” said some disgruntled taxpayers.
Asked about it, Mr Seshadri acknowledged there was some confusion at the Canara banks as although their employees were trained at workshops to collect property tax, many did not turn up for them. “We have sought their co-operation , but since it’s early days still and we are seeing a rush of people, the bank staff need some time to deal with them,” he maintained.
Despite the problems, around 4,000 people paid their property taxes online on Tuesday, according to him. The BBMP was in the process of calculating the revenue generated and would be able to tell how much it had earned in the next couple of days, he added.
BBMP okays budget amid chaos
The BBMP budget, with an outlay of Rs 9,546 crore, was approved amidst chaos and acrimony which also saw an increase of Rs 552 crore in the outlay.
Taxation and Finance Committee Chairman M. Shivaraju had on March 28 presented the budget with an outlay of Rs 8,994.41 crore. After the discussion, it was enhanced and sent to the state government for approval.
Opposition party leader Padmanabha Reddy dubbed the budget as bogus and vision less. Reddy called for privilege motion on the budget seeking for voting. The BJP enjoys a higher strength than the Congress in BBMP.
However, Reddys demand was turned down by Mayor B. N. Manjunath Reddy. This upset BJP corporators, who shouted slogans against Mayor and Congress, and also opposed increase in property tax. After many years BBMP had presented and passed a budget on time.
