Each of the 40 advocates in the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike’s legal panel has to attend to nearly 400 cases pertaining to the civic body. The reason: of the 23,260 cases filed since 2001, at least 13,198 are pending in various courts.
Opposition Leader Padmanabha Reddy, during a BBMP council meeting to discuss star questions, alleged that advocates of the legal cell were unable to argue successfully in favour of the civic body as they were being burdened with a huge number of cases. He alleged that this was one of the main reasons for revenue loss.
Several cases pertaining to collection of improvement cess on BBMP properties that have either been rented or leased out are pending. Demanding that all BBMP properties be given property identification numbers, Mr. Reddy also sought digitising of all legal documents.
Mayor B.N. Manjunath Reddy and several councillors, cutting across party lines, expressed dissatisfaction over the functioning of the legal cell. Mr. Manjunath Reddy said there is a need to change the panel and the chief of the legal cell.
Property tax
Later, M. Shivaraju, chairperson of the standing committee for taxation and finance, admitted there have been technical glitches in collection of property tax. Despite these issues, the civic body has collected Rs. 943.67 crore so far, of which Rs. 760 crore has been collected offline.
He said BBMP had written to National Informatics Centre to fix the technical glitches. Issues like change in name of property owner, rebate for defence personnel, and service charge for charitable institutions have already been resolved, he said.
