KMC collects Rs 40 lakh as property tax in a raid

This law enables a KMC officer to raid the defaulter’s place for collecting the pending tax.

Though the total amount of tax pending in Kolkata Municipal Corporation is over Rs 300 crore, KMC has not bothered to implement the twenty eight-year-old Act to collect tax from defaulters in the recent years.

The total number of employees in KMC’s assessment department is not less than 750. Out of these, there are 141 inspectors. One of the prime roles of the inspectors is to visit the defaulters and collect tax from them. But this rarely happens. Their duty ceases after issuing a notice to the defaulters.

In spite of the presence of 141 inspectors, the civic body had to resort to unfair means like disconnecting water supply in the households of the defaulters for collecting the pending tax. But soon after bribing the KMC officers, water supply in these houses were resumed.

But the Calcutta High Court had passed an order and asked the civic body not to deprive people of the basic civic amenities (like water) for collecting dues.

“According to the order passed by Calcutta High Court, KMC cannot mount pressure on the defaulters to pay tax by disconnecting basic civic amenities like water supply. So we had to resort to Section 221 A (1) of the CMC Act, 1980, for collecting the due,” said Anirudha Mukherjee, Chief Manager of the Revenue Department in KMC.

KMC officers of the Assessment department visited the premises at 5/1 S M Ghosh Sarani in Central Kolkata this morning and slammed the tax collection notice. The officers left the spot after a portion of the money was paid through draft. “The total amount of tax due from the party is more than Rs 62 lakh. Kolkata Municipal Corporation had not received tax from the said premises since 1980. A notice was issued to the party, Bikash Bapna, last September. But when they did not turn up, we arrived to collect the pending money,” said Falguni Sengupta of the Assessment department, KMC.

The rest of the amount will be paid to the civic body within February 14, said Bikash’s manager, Kumar Bhattacharya. The premise is a storehouse for electrical and electronic goods.