BBMP to lose Rs 270 crore over property tax blunder

With the state government resolving the property tax fiasco, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) said it would implement stricter verification of the assessment forms in future, even as the civic body said it would lose about Rs 270 crore due to the government's move.

"We are already implementing the e-aasthi platform and collecting at least 40 parameters for every property that will help us map the properties better. Going ahead, we are planning to use technology to ensure that such problems are avoided or brought to light soon,” said Dr Deepak R L, Special Commissioner (Revenue), BBMP.

The officer said that zonal officials had been directed to ensure that most of the applications were verified. "We are trying to verify all the self-assessment applications that are submitted. This will help us flag any wrong parameters at the earliest," he added.

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The property tax mess has its origin in the BBMP's ambitious Self-Assessment Scheme (SAS). Introduced in 2016, the SAS gave citizens an option to choose between various zones depending on the nature of their property in Bengaluru.

But due to a software glitch, citizens chose different zones for their properties and ended up paying less. The civic body realised the mistake three years later and began serving notices on citizens for "defaulting" on property tax payments and slapped heavy fines.

The BBMP had identified a whopping 78,254 owners for defaulting on their tax liability.

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Drawing the state government's attention to citizens' plight, DH had published a series of reports in the past few months tracking the progress of the issue.

Reacting to the issue after the Cabinet meeting, Law Minister J C Madhuswamy said that there was a "small controversy" pertaining to the issue.

"When citizens tried uploading details to the app, we (BBMP) should have properly displayed the zone they belonged to. Instead, those under commercial or industrial zones were shown as belonging to residential zones," he said.

"They were asked to repay with a penalty of up to five times. Additionally, 2% interest per month was also levied as per the provision under the Karnataka Municipal Corporation Act on those who undermined their tax liability in the SAS system."

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Sources in the BBMP revealed to DH that out of the 78,000-plus citizens, as many as 22,000 were served notices and close to 11,000 of them had already paid the arrears.

"We had served notices on nearly 22,000 property owners. However, since there was strong opposition from citizens, which was escalated to higher levels, we refrained from serving the other notices. However, nearly 11,000 of them have already paid up to the tune of Rs 20.5 crore,” said an official from the BBMP’s Revenue Department.

According to officials, the BBMP may lose nearly Rs 270 crore which it had levied as a penalty and interest.

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