The Deolali Cantonment Board (DCB) has deployed different teams to make door-to-door visits to request people to pay property taxes as almost 18% recovery is pending even as the current financial year is drawing to a close.
Administrative officer UV Gorwadkar of Deolali cantonment board said, “Over the past few days, our teams are visiting houses and appealing to the property owners to pay property tax online if they have failed to do so. Property tax of around Rs 75 lakh is yet to be recovered.”
The board was expecting the property tax collection of Rs 4.38 crore by the year-end. However, so far only Rs 3.61 crores have been collected. UV Gorwadkar said that if the taxes are recovered fully, it would be a huge relief as the revenue generated from tax comes in handy for taking up certain development works as well as paying the salaries of the employees.
Former members of the cantonment board said property tax is one of the very few sources of revenue for the cantonment board. Meanwhile, the cantonment board also has to rely on service charge of approximately Rs 30 crore annually from the armed forces.
Things become difficult when there are delays in getting the service charge. The members also said that the water supply scheme run by the cantonment board is at a loss as the expenditure incurred on running this scheme is much more than the revenue collected through water tax, hence the board officials and members always appeal to residents to pay taxes on time.
