The Hindu : DDA affair leaves MCD `poor'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 09, 2003

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Other States - New Delhi

DDA affair leaves MCD `poor'

By Lalit K. Jha

NEW DELHI APRIL 8. The raids on the office and residence of the erstwhile Delhi Development Authority Vice-Chairman, Subhash Sharma, by the Central Bureau of Investigation have "deprived'' the Municipal Corporation of Delhi of a rare chance to collect a record Rs. 1,000 crores as house tax in an year. Still the revenue generation of MCD from property tax has touched an all-time high of Rs. 850 crores.

It is understood that Mr. Sharma, who has now been arrested by the CBI, had ordered payment of Rs. 100 crores to the MCD as house tax, which had been pending for the past several years.

According to highly-placed sources in the MCD, cheques worth Rs. 100 crores were to be released by DDA on March 31. The DDA owes Rs. 167 crores as house tax. Only a few days before the raids, the DDA at the intervention of Mr. Sharma deposited cheques worth Rs. 20 crores with the MCD, though it was only after the civic body threatened to attach its bank accounts. ``Unfortunately, this did not happen. The CBI raided the DDA Vice-Chairman on the day the cheque was to be released. It seems luck was not on our side,'' said a top MCD officials in the House Tax Department.

Though under normal circumstances the civic body would have proceeded with its decision to attach DDA's bank account, its senior officials decided not to do so given the chaos in the DDA after the raids.

"Further, the Vice-Chairman is being changed every other day. Today we have the third Vice-Chairman after the removal of Mr. Sharma. Under such circumstances, we do not know with whom to persue the matter. So we were unable to get Rs. 100 crores from the DDA,'' officials said, adding that they would take up the matter with Anil Baijal, the new DDA Vice-Chairman, once he settles down in office.

Senior MCD officials said several other Government agencies and Departments have cleared their house tax dues once they were threatened that their bank accounts would be attached. Prominent among them are Delhi Jal Board and Delhi Transport Corporation.

The increase in house tax collection touching Rs. 850 crores, as against Rs. 786 crores during the year 2001-2002, was mainly because of the stern measure of the Accessor and Collector, Feroz Khan, to attach the bank accounts of the major defaulters amongst which included Government agencies like Public Works Department and National Science Centre and other organisations like India Habitat Centre and Sports Authority of India.

``Had this extreme step not been taken, it would have been very difficult to even touch the RS. 500-600 crores figure. Only due to this decision, we managed to collect about Rs. 300 crores from major property tax defaulters,'' officials said. Otherwise, this year experienced a very lukewarm response from the general public in paying property tax.

"People generally avoided paying property tax this year as they had a misconception about the unit area system of assessment of house tax,'' the official said.

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