NEW DELHI: Accusing the Congress-led Municipal Corporation of Delhi of failing miserably to improve its property tax collections, the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday said the collections in 2005-06 dipped by Rs. 90 crores compared with 2004-05 despite an increase in the number of taxpayers.

"Since the Unit Area Method for property tax was introduced two years ago, the collections have declined. In 2004-05, Rs. 575.76 crores was collected. That went down to Rs. 486.46 crores in 2005-06, while the total collections also declined from Rs.817.93 cores to Rs.794.41 crores during the same period. Interestingly, the target for last financial year was over Rs.1,500 crores," said the Leader of the Opposition in the MCD, Subhash Arya.

Property tax is the major source of income for the MCD and its failure to improve collections is causing grave financial difficulties for the civic body. If this continues, the civic body would soon sink into a deep financial mess as all the money would be diverted towards paying the salaries of employees and nothing would be left for development works, Mr. Arya said, adding that while the tax collection was just Rs.800 crores, the annual salary bill was around Rs.1,400 crores.

"The MCD had conducted a survey which found that there are around 25-lakh properties in the Capital, but only 7-lakh have so far come under the tax net. Interestingly, the number of taxpayers has increased by around 75,000 but collections have declined," Mr. Arya pointed out.

He also slammed the Congress for implementing the Unit Area Method system in haste without carrying out detailed discussions in the MCD House and evaluating the mechanism. "We had sought discussions on the same as it had several lacunae. The major lacuna was that notices cannot be served on defaulters. Similarly malls, commercial complexes and offices, and big properties are not being adequately taxed, while those belonging to the middle class are being heavily taxed," he added.

Demanding that property tax collections be streamlined to save the civic body from bankruptcy, Mr. Arya said all lacunae in the system should be done away with and the tax net increased as only around 70 per cent of the properties in Delhi were covered.

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