B’loreOne and BBMP One are not one
Don’t be confused, property tax can only be paid at the BBMP One centres
The rechristening of the Palike Help centres as ‘BBMP One’ by BBMP has created a headache for Bangalore One centres.
On Saturday morning, people gathered at the BangaloreOne centre in Jayanagar to pay the property tax for the present year, and turned irate when they were told that they had to go to the Palike Help Centres (BBMP One) instead.
Co-ordinator of BangaloreOne centres, Devi Shetty said that the customers got annoyed when they were not allowed to pay the property tax at the centres. “Despite telling them, that the taxes could not be paid at the centres, they would not listen to us. One person asked us why we had issued information in the newspapers that we (BangaloreOne) would be collecting the taxes. After we got the newspaper that they were referring to, we realised that they had mistaken BBMP One for BangaloreOne. To make matters worse, our centre in Jayanagar is located in BBMP building, so people just assumed that we were collecting the taxes. We had a tough time convincing them to leave, as they were blocking other transactions,” he explained.
The BangaloreOne centres are run by the e-governance department and provides a host of citizen services from accepting payment of phone bills to booking of tickets, while the BBMP One was mooted by the Agenda for Bengaluru Infrastructure and Development Task Force (ABIDe) for providing BBMPs civic services.
Help centres
Ironically, BangaloreOne used to accept property taxes earlier and this facility was not extended this year, as the revision of taxes led BBMP to open its own help centres to accept payments.
A similar incident happened at another BangaloreOne centre in RT Nagar a few days earlier, as people lined up to pay property tax.
“After Saturday’s incident, we have told all BangaloreOne centres to post notices stating that taxes have to be paid at BBMP One centres only,” Shetty
clarified. BBMP officials admitted that it had caused quite a bit of confusion and the name was given only on ABIDe’s insistence.
An official with BBMP commented “We call them Palike Help Centres or Contact Points, so we are issuing advertisements over the next few days clarifying that the two are different and the tax can be paid only at BBMP one.”
There are about 90 BBMP centres at present, while there are about 53 centres of BangaloreOne.
