HYDERABAD: The GHMC sets a lot of ambitions targets and time-bound deadlines for itself but seldom does it meet those goals. A three-year delay here and two-year off schedule there is commonplace for civic projects. The latest is its tardy effort in bringing owners of unauthorised constructions into the tax net after promising to streamline such properties a year ago.
The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) decided a year ago to levy a super-structure tax on all unauthorised properties built on all lands –whether private, government, land under the Urban Land Ceiling (ULC), endowment land, Wakf or any other category. It even conducted a comprehensive survey for the purpose and identified 1,04,712 properties with unauthorised construction. But a year on, it has managed to bring a paltry 5,140 properties into the tax net.
The erstwhile government of united Andhra Pradesh released GO 299 on December 20, 2012 related to levying a super-structure tax on such properties to increase revenues by bringing all such properties in the city under the property tax bracket. Then, in 2016 the corporation embarked on a survey and identified over one lakh structures that needed to be levied to pay property tax.
According to highly-placed sources in the GHMC, not many property owners could be taxed owing to authorities succumbing to political pressure in many cases and civic body officials too going easy on owners of properties built on private and government lands.
A senior GHMC official said on condition of anonymity said that some field level staff deliberately let defaulters evade the property tax. The official said that some over enthusiastic deputy commissioners conducted a random survey and identified more than 1 lakh properties built on private and government lands etc.
“When officials lower down were asked to collect super-structure tax they said that there are not more than 10,000 properties in all 30 circles on which tax could be levied,” the official said.
The official said most of the properties which were liable to pay property tax of Rs 1,200 were allowed to get away with a payment of Rs 101. The corporation is now concentrating on levying the super-structure tax on non-residential properties. The official said that the corporation had collected '9.63 crore against dues of Rs 36.52 crore.
Asked why the GHMC was not laying more focus on super-structure tax collection, the official said that it was due to staff shortage. He also attributed staff crunch to the high level of corruption among civic officials at the field level going unchecked. The GHMC proposes to levy property tax only on structures and not land.
