Property Speaks

Indore: Barely five percent of the property owners pay property tax to the Indore Municipal Corporation. “Appalled” by this startling fact, Lokayukta Justice PP Naolekar on Tuesday asked civic body officers to seize and auction properties of the defaulters to recover dues.

IMC officials, who met Justice Naolekar during his visit to Indore, informed him that out of 3.83 lakh taxpayers, they were able to collect tax from 6500 property owners in 2010-11

“I was appalled. The Indore (municipal) corporation had collected just Rs 12 crore as tax from around 6500 property owners and failed to collect tax from over 1.8 lakh defaulters, who have not been paying property tax for more than three years,” Naolekar told DNA.

In fact, the anti-corruption agency is setting a precedent in India by asking all other municipal corporations in Madhya Pradesh to widen tax net and recover outstanding dues promptly. Thus, a not only government babu, the usual suspects, any defaulter of the property tax to the civic body is under the Lokayukta radar.

Naolekar instructed the IMC officials to make public names of the people who fail to pay taxes and initiate action against defaulters by seizing and auctioning their properties. The Lokayuka asked the IMC to submit a monthly progress report of their actions.

“I have tried to include all the civic corporations in Madhya Pradesh (under the campaign),” Naolekar said. It is not possible to include all local bodies at one go but this will be a beginning, he added.

The Lokayukta was surprised at the staggering amount of dues owed to the corporations across the state by the taxpayers. “If the total money is recovered, the corporations will never feel any financial crunch,” he averred.

Sources close to Lokayukta told DNA that similar plan is being prepared for corporations in Gwalior, Bhopal and Jabalpur, who too would face the heat soon.

On whether the anti-corruption body could monitor the civic corporations, agency’s legal advisors are of the view that the relevant act empowers the Lokayukta to ensure that lapses in government’s revenue generation are plugged.