The Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) has handed over the responsibility of property assessment and linking the property holding numbers to electricity consumer numbers to the public as the civic body is clueless as to how they should recover Rs. 250 crore property tax pending from over two lakh residents with holding numbers.
The method has been adopted to filter tax defaulters.
The municipality has asked the citizens to pay property tax dues by January 1 to avoid electricity disconnection and for this the civic body has ties up with the Assam Power Distribution Company Limited (APDCL).
According to a data provided by GMC, there are over 3 lakh electricity consumers within the jurisdiction of the civic body, of which over 2lakhs have property holding numbers. The GMC official said that the remaining electricity consumers have no property holding number, which means they have never paid property tax.
Moreover, only around 83,000 of the over two lakh households having property holding numbers paid the taxes last year and the remaining are yet to pay.
Meanwhile, GMC mayor Mrigen Sarania said the civic body has been incurring a heavy loss in revenue collection for years and therefore, it has adopted a user-friendly platform allowing the citizens to assess their property, create holding numbers, if they do not have, and clear the dues. He admitted that the system of self-service has been made as the GMC does not have sufficient manpower to go on field visit to survey and recover the dues in all the 60 wards.
