The Nashik Municipal Corporation (NMC) has started issuing warrants to confiscate the properties of property tax defaulters, who have not paid their dues despite getting notices several times. This comes after a significant drop in revenue through property tax collection.
The civic body, on Monday, issued warrants to 40 big property tax defaulters with dues of more than Rs 1 lakh. There are around 1,000 property taxpayers who have dues of over Rs 1 lakh.
Municipal commissioner Kailas Jadhav has already directed all the six divisional officers of the NMC to start taking action against the big property tax defaulters. Nashik Road divisional office has started issuing warrants from Monday, while other divisions will start issuing warrants in a day or two.
“We are targeting big property tax defaulters with more than Rs 1 lakh as dues as per the directive of the civic head. We have issued warrants to 40 big property tax defaulters with an ultimatum of one month to pay the property tax dues. We will confiscate the properties thereafter and such properties will be auctioned,” said Dilip Menkar, the divisional officer of Nashik Road division.
In the past two months, NMC had given final notices to over 1.25 lakh property taxpayers asking them to pay their dues. But most of the defaulters have not done so. Hence, the civic body has decided to issue warrants to the defaulters.
The NMC administration has set a property tax collection target of Rs 150 crore for the current financial year, but they could only collect Rs 95 crore so far.
With one-and-a-half months remaining in the current year, NMC is yet to collect Rs 55 crore in property tax. During the corresponding period last financial year, NMC had collected around Rs 132 crore.
