Property Tax payment scam !

In the wake of a spate of scams and corruptions at the national level, the capital’s MCD is no exception!

It is shocking to bear and hear that the MCD’S Property Tax office at Geeta Colony had not maintained any records of the payments made by law-abiding citizens for over a period of ten years, albeit the people concerned have  made payment of the tax due regularly and always well in advance and fortunately kept a record of such receipts issued by the MCD Property Tax office itself!

It is seen from their records that no entries of the payments made have been entered in their ‘official registers’, so far on the pretext of ‘shortage of staff’ over a period of time and consequently those who have made the payments have been directed ‘officially’ to produce the original receipts and make available the photocopies of the same to them, so that they could now make necessary entries in the registers!  Can you, by any stretch of imagination in this 21^st century of e-governance, which we wish to implement, the records in the MCD’s Property Tax Office are still being maintained manually and that too had not been done for the last over 10 years!!

This Society (Anand Vihar) had protested against this state of affairs for not fault of their law-abiding citizens, who always make payment of dues to the Govt., whether electricity/water/gas/phone bills etc. periodically, so that their connections are not arbitrarily cut by such agencies and make payment of the property tax, as well, annually much before the target date fixed by the Govt.

For this purpose this Society had been arranging ‘collection camp’ annually for the last over 5 years in our Society’s premises by getting the officials of the Property Tax office, arrange to collect the duly filled-in forms from all residents and make them available to the officials concerned at the spot for which receipts are also given on the spot.  The money-starved MCD gets at one spot and on one day over Rs.10 lakhs towards property tax payment! In addition the visiting officials are ‘looked after well’ too! Despite all these efforts made by our Society, the MCD Property Tax office at Geeta Colony had not kept any record and made necessary entries towards payments on their official registers!!

It is strange and shocking for the ‘inaction’ of the babus in the Property Tax Office, the senior citizens and others in our colony have been made to suffer on this account who had been asked to produce the old receipts immediately!!! Can you imagine the amount of time, energy and mental torture faced by the residents!  Is there no remedy? Why aam aadmi should face all these onslaughts for such a callous and irresponsible action of the babus! Will the officials of the Property Tax office of the MCD reply to this scandal and scam? We don’t expect or hope unless and until some high-ups at the helm of affairs intervene in and set the matters right before the commencement of the ensuing financial year which is only a month ahead!

TK Balu

Secretary/RBECHS/Anand Vihar