Nagpur: The Nagpur bench of Bombay high court has issued notice to Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) for bunglings in
property tax department. A public interest litigation (PIL) has been filed by NMC Housing Tax Grievances Redressal Society, a non-profit organization. NMC has been asked to file its reply within two weeks.
The PIL states that the civic administration does not even have ledger records of property tax owners, let alone maintain online data. “Since NMC does not have proper records of good number of tax payers, the concerned officers are sending demand notes on their whims. There has been a significant rise in number of such cases,” it adds.
The society has claimed tax for the period for which money has already been paid is included in the revised bill. This has led to open loot of tax payers. It has also alleged misappropriation of funds by the NMC officers to the tune of crores of rupees.
It has suggested that the entire system needs to be overhauled by information technology (IT) initiatives and digitalization as mandated by policy initiatives of the state government. The society has demanded that accountant general (AG) of Maharashtra carry out full-fledged investigation and suggest remedial measures, which can be taken up with the guidance of National Informatics Centre (NIC).
The society had issued a legal notice to municipal commissioner in December, 2014, raising some demands. No response was received in this regard. The demands included immediate constitution of ‘Municipal Property Tax Board for NMC, maintenance of assessment book as mandated by Maharashtra Municipal Corporation (MMC) Act, fully computerizing the tax management system in time-bound manner and investigation by AG of property tax department.
The petitioner has submitted many grievances before the HC. It claimed that huge amount was lying in the suspense account of property tax department and entries have not been reconciled over a long period. There are serious shortcomings in the special written notice prescribed under the MMC Act, relevant notifications and summary booklet of property tax calculation etc are not available on the website of NMC, the civic agency has failed to carry out reassessment in time for the entire city, NMC should upload a software on its website so that a taxpayer is able to know all the deciding factors on the basis of which tax has been assessed.
