Citizen groups, residents welfare associations and experts have raised questions about the old property tax data, which was gathered over the last 12 years, not being utilised in the new portal made by National Informatics Centre. The taxpayers, meanwhile, have to feed all the data again while filing their taxes.
United Residents Joint Action (URJA) says that the new portal is more inconvenient and defeats the purpose of the entire revamp exercise. A letter in this regard has also been written to LG Anil Baijal highlighting the problems being faced by taxpayers.
“They are asking for more information regarding the properties. Mutation, registration, e-mail address and what not. Many senior citizens do not have an e-mail address. There is a large section of population in Delhi which cannot furnish these details,” said Atul Goel, who heads URJA.
He added that integrating new features in the previous website would have been a better option. “Everyone is being asked to file a fresh form. If the target is to increase the collection, why are the taxpayers being inconvenienced?” he asked.
The letter to the LG states: “The portal asks you to register yourself as a user first before moving forward…This feature is making it difficult for the consumer to pay fast. Even if you try registering afresh, it shows an error.”
Sudha Sinha who heads the Dwarka CGHS federation said that they have received numerous complaints about the new portal, especially from senior citizens. “The corporation has UPIC numbers of properties. If we file UPIC number, all the details should be shown,” she added.
“I had made the old software 12 years ago on a pro-bono basis. The new software is leading to chaos,” rued Sudhir Vohra who was associated with the development of the old software.
“The data collected over the last decade has not been migrated to the new software. Earlier, whenever you put the unique property number in the portal, your ‘last return’ used to come on screen. You could alter the details easily,” he said.
“If some changes in existing data occur, such as a new room is built or the ownership changes, then only those data points should be changed. The fact that URJA and RWAs are complaining shows that the new system is not friendly,” he added.
Senior corporation officials said that feedback would be taken into account while updating the software and taxpayers, for now, could use the old cheque-based payment methods.
“The old data was not in uniform format. If any discrepancy exists in the new entries, we can still cross check it with the old data. Addition of mobile numbers and e-mail addresses will help us in linking properties to particular individuals for more transparency,” said an official.
