New Delhi: North Delhi Municipal Corporation is steadily inching closer towards its target of maximising property tax collections before the end of the financial year on March 31. In fact, North MCD offices remained operational this weekend to compensate for the loss of a working day on Monday due to Holi.
Notably, several North MCD employees have pinned their hopes to a surplus collection this year so that the civic body, self-admittedly under a cash-crunch, does not have to rely on Delhi government-issued funds to pay salaries. Mayor Jai Prakash has said on several occasions that a good tax-revenue could translate into timely payment of pending salaries for teachers, nurses, doctors, paramedical staff, safai karamcharis and other category-4 employees. The north civic body has also given multiple tax rebates, deadline extensions this past financial year to encourage taxpayers.
Kunal Kashyap, IRS, Joint Accessor and Collector at North MCD HQ said, "As of March 27, we have collected Rs 605 crore in property tax from over 4.16 lakh taxpayers, of whom some 23,000 were beneficiaries under our amnesty schemes. This is already a surplus compared to last year's collection of Rs 548 crore. We have already surpassed the previously-set expectation. On Sunday, being a prelude to Holi, our collection was a little bit low. But I expected the count to go upto Rs 610 crore because Rs 5 crore would definitely have been collected. Collections on Holi will be nil, but the last 2 days we expect to collect at least Rs 20 crore. We are anticipating that we will manage to reach a figure of Rs 630 crore. We might even cross that figure if outstanding funds from certain government departments such as the
CPWD also come in. Many government departments could
not discharge their total liability this year due to a paucity of funds".
When asked if property tax collections will fund employee salaries, Kashyap said, "Definitely. Right now property tax is one of the biggest sources servicing the expenditure of North MCD since the past 2-3 months. So, it will definitely be a major source to pay salaries".