Gurgaon: The municipal corporation has to pay Rs 1,881 crore as property tax, of which 15 per cent is owed by 100 defaulters, each of whom has to pay more than Rs 1 crore.
According to the company’s data, 100 large defaulters owe the company Rs 288.4 crore. The rest, Rs 1,593 crore, is owed by 4.9 lakh landowners.
Newly appointed MCG Commissioner Ashok Kumar Garg, at the time of his arrival, told TOI in an interview that the civic body would target large defaulters to increase its revenue. Property tax remains a crucial revenue source for the corporation, which has estimated property tax revenue at Rs 300 crore in the current financial year (2023-24).
In the financial year 2022-23, MCG had set a target of generating Rs 500 crore through property tax, but it earned only half of that.
A senior company official told TOI on Monday that defaulters with large dues have been served several notices.
“At this stage, we intend to implement strict measures against defaulters to secure outstanding payments. Actions against them include sealing their properties, disconnecting water supply and selling to auction the properties if they still do not pay their property tax,” the official said.
The MCG chief told TOI on Monday that action would be initiated against the defaulters in the next 3-4 days.
“We will focus on major defaulters with significant outstanding dues. We will start by serving notices to them and then take action against them,” Garg said.
Asked about unpaid dues, residents’ welfare associations said many defaulters are unable to pay their dues due to errors in property identification documents.
Earlier this year, MCG also received complaints from property owners that their assessments were pending due to discrepancies in property identification data. They said that since their contact details, property size and addresses were incorrect, they could not pay the tax.
“The number of people in default on property taxes has undoubtedly increased over the past two years due to unresolved inconsistencies in the data. The situation remains problematic when property dimensions are inaccurately recorded, as well as incorrect names and contact details in the system We have been running from pillar to post to correct the errors in the property identifiers, but no meaningful work has been done to resolve this issue,” said Pawan Yadav, chairman of Sushant Lok. Extension RWA.