Covid further drains out Delhi corporations’ coffers

NEW DELHI: This year’s pandemic has already started impacting the revenue collection of corporations from the major sources. The collection from property tax, licensing fees, etc has come down to one third or even less forcing municipalities to approach the state government to issue relief packages to improve their financial situation.
East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) has collected only about Rs 1.6 crore till date as property tax from 2,400 taxpayers in comparison to Rs 50 crore last year. In 2019-20, the collection was Rs 30 crore till May 31 and 11,232 people submitted the tax.
In North Delhi Municipal Corporation, the collection from property tax has been Rs 15 lakh so far in comparison to zero collection in 2020-21 till this time and Rs 175 crore in 2019-20. Mayor Jai Prakash said that they have demanded a relief package of Rs 1,000 crore to meet the basis requirement.
Due to Covid pandemic, civic bodies are also facing issues in holding camps in residential and commercial areas unlike previous years when teams were sent to different places to collect property tax cheques in large numbers.
South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) has collected Rs 42 crore in 2021-22 till May 21. In comparison, the collection in the first quarter (till June 30) was Rs 275.5 crore in 2020-21, Rs 315 crore in 2019-20 and Rs 332.6 crore in 2018-19.
SDMC leader of house Narendra Chawla said that the situation was extremely disappointing this time. “We managed to cope with the situation last year but things don’t look promising so far this time. We are motivating people to submit tax by giving a 3% rebate on residential properties after they give an affidavit of vaccination. We have even introduced a mobile app for submitting tax online. There is also a plan to increase the deadline for giving rebates on submitting advance tax by a month,” he said further.
The civic body is considering making some policies to augment its revenue collection. “With the next year being an election year, we need to speed up the process so that the projects, which have already been approved, can take off. SDMC has targeted to collect Rs 950 crore from property tax this year and we really need to work hard to achieve it,” said Chawla.
The pandemic has resulted in a sharp decline in the number of health trade licences renewed too. In EDMC, 2,678 health trade licences were renewed in 2018, 2,615 in 2019, 725 in 2020 and 702 till May 21, 2021. “People have no money to meet their household requirement, forget about renewing licences. We are waiting for the lockdown to get over after which meetings will be called with various department heads to finalise future plans,” said EDMC mayor Nirmal Jain.
In North Corporation, 2,592 health trade licences were renewed in 2018 and only 769 in 2021. In South Corporation, the number of licences renewed was 3,750 in 2018, 3,673 in 2019, 568 in 2020 and 778 in 2021.
There has been a sharp decline in the number of general trade licence renewals too.