258 properties under hammer for tax dues

AHMEDABAD: The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has begun the procedure to auction off 258 properties in the city. After the AMC published a list of defaulting properties, 55 owners came forward and paid their tax dues.
Jainik Vakil, chairman of the AMC revenue committee, said after the civic body published the list of 313 defaulters, 55 cleared their dues. He said the AMC has begun the procedure to auction off such properties. He said the AMC will also share defaulters' information with the Credit Information Bureau (India) Limited (CIBIL).
In order to ensure that defaulters pay their property tax, the AMC in April initiated a move to put liens on properties that are in default. This was the first time such a lien has been put on property by the civic body.
Vakil said liens were put on Bandhan Farm in Jodhpur and Highland in Navrangpura. The AMC later recovered the dues in full from Bandhan Farm. He said the AMC now plans to put in place a standard protocol for putting liens on the property of defaulters. The AMC is now drawing up a list of the big defaulters and will soon put liens on these properties. It has already begun the liens process for 24 such properties.
Data from the AMC shows that after their names were made public as defaulters, the highest amount of dues were collected in the South Zone, followed by the East Zone. Of 55 properties where dues were paid, 33 were from these two zones. In the North West and North Zones, no property owner turned up to clear their dues. Of the 258 properties whose tax is pending, the highest number, 71, are in West Zone, followed by 61 in North West Zone and 60 in South Zone. East Zone has the lowest number of defaulters, four.