Property tax assessment moving at a snail’s pace

Nagpur: The Nagpur Municipal Corporation's property assessment survey in the city is going on at a snail's pace. So far, it has completed only 45.77% of the 'geo-enabled' survey to automate its entire property tax assessment function.

The NMC had entrusted the job to a private firm — M/s Cybertech Systems and Software Ltd — in 2015 for the door-to-door assessment of properties and deadline for the firm was of two years.

NMC now hopes to complete the remaining work in three months. As a result, the tax department has extended the deadline of the private agency to complete the survey by December end.

Even after six months of the current fiscal, the NMC has failed to generate invoices for the current fiscal and this delay would hit its property tax revenue collection target of Rs392.19 crore.

Sources in NMC's property tax department said that there are around 5.31 lakh properties in 10 zones in the city and through Cybertech Systems the NMC is doing its Geographic Information System (GIS) base mapping to increase its revenue and to calibrate the identified unassessed properties.

Since 2000, no survey was done to assess the properties under the NMC limits, said sources. For any civic body, one of the major sources of revenue is its property tax collection. To get the correct revenue realization, GIS-based technologies and applications would be extremely effective as it was also implemented by Pune Municipal Corporation and it had helped to increase its property tax collection manifold.

Till September 25, the firm has completed survey of 2.43 lakh properties and identified 74,075 new properties. The zonal offices have approved 2,06,286 units of total 3,93,687 units in 2,43,289 properties. However, the zones offices' have rejected surveys of around 81,127 units for various reasons like incomplete data, wrong address etc.

According to data procured from the NMC, the firm has not even achieved 50% of the target in eight zones. Its poor performance can be gauged from the fact that in Satranjipura and Gandhibagh zones, it has completed only 9.82% and 12.73% of its target of 34,031 and 24,906 properties. So far it has finished assessments of 3,714 and 4,574 properties in these two zones, the data report stated.

It has achieved almost 90% of its target in two zones — Nehru Nagar and Ashi Nagar by completing surveys of 50,471 and 63,537 properties and approved of 50,210 and 62,657 units, respectively. It is a major question that how the firm would finish the assessment in three months.