PUNE: The civic body has launched an all-woman team, the Damini Squad, to speed up the recovery of property tax in the city.
“We have introduced this initiative for the first time. As many as 12 squads have been established, and each group has five members. If required, more squads will be brought in,” said Madhav Jagtap, the head of the property tax department of Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC). Over the last four days, the squads have collected more than Rs 1 crore.
On average, PMC collects Rs 2,000 crore as property tax per year. It had set a target of Rs 2,500 crore for the 2024-25 financial year from this levy. But officials said the civic body needs to recover around Rs 3,000 crore from property owners this year as its overall property tax dues are around Rs 10,000 crore. There are about 14.5 lakh properties within PMC limits, and property tax is one of its biggest sources of income.
“Issues like the ban on the tax from merged areas have affected the overall revenue generation of the department. The administration is taking extra efforts to meet the target for the fiscal year. Initiatives such as the auction of properties of tax defaulters are being explored to recover the dues,” said a senior official of PMC’s property tax department.
According to civic officials, PMC needs to recover tax not only from commercial and residential properties but also from mobile towers. Recovery from cellphone towers has become a challenging task for PMC amid objections from operators of these structures and state govt’s directive to the civic body to go slow until legal issues are resolved. According to PMC data, there are over 3,000 mobile towers across the city. Its survey conducted two years ago revealed that there were around 1,600 illegal towers in PMC areas. PMC charges tax at commercial rates from these towers.
Activists welcomed the initiative to launch a new squad, but said the administration must focus on recovery from big defaulters. The introduction of many amnesty schemes for tax defaulters has also adversely impacted tax recovery.
“The administration is not giving any recognition to diligent taxpayers. On the other hand, they are introducing amnesty schemes for the defaulters. It does not send a good message in society and adversely impacts the tax collection,” said Vivek Velankar of Sajag Nagrik Manch, a citizens’ group.
