JOIN USB1 centres ask for blank cheques
The queues were bad enough, but the B1 centres want property tax payers to bring blank cheques with them.
When Jayaram (name changed) visited the nearest B1 centre in Jayanagar II Block on April 23 to pay the property tax, he was in for a rude shock.
“I went to the B1 centre only to see a discrepancy in amount calculated for my property. The discrepancy was only Re 1 extra and hence I asked them to go ahead and accept it. But the B1 centres refused to accept it,” he said.
Jayaram was in for another surprise, when the B1 agent asked him to return with a blank cheque so that henceforth it could be easier for them to compute the tax.
“How do you carry a blank cheque, if you are paying on behalf of someone else” he asks.
When contacted, BangaloreOne officials said that they were facing a dilemma as the software could not compute additional amount paid by the people.
Carry over problem
According to the official, the system cannot calculate the excess paid and carry over to the next payment of property tax. To clear the confusion, B1 centres have asked customers to come with a blank cheque, so that there will be no confusion on the amount to be paid.
The only source of relief for the staff is that most people have been coming to the centres and filling the forms and the amount after checking with the information online.
“We have had very few cases, where we had to ask people to bring in new cheques,” the official said.
BBMP officials state that there have been directions issued by them to accept only the correct figures entered on a demand draft or cheque on account of accounting problems.
Jayaram who was trying to file the property tax on behalf of his cousin who is currently living in USA was shocked to find application number duplicated.
“The form was rejected by the officials as the application numbered 4282529 had already been accepted under someone else’s name,” said Jayaram.
BBMP officials accepted that there was a possibility of form numbers being duplicated.
“The application numbers have all been stamped on these forms. There might have been cases where the numbers could be duplicated due to negligence,” informed a Palike
official.
New areas not updated
Complaints from other corners of the City were also pouring in, due to lack of properties being updated on the servers in new BBMP areas.
“I was filing my property tax when officials at BangaloreOne centres stated that my property in Thanisandra was not updated,” said Mahesh.
Palike officials agree that some outlying areas have not been updated on account of various reasons including the laxity among AROs.