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Govt. succumbs to bureaucracy

By Sujay Mehdudia

NEW DELHI FEB. 7. After putting up a brave front for the past few months, the Delhi Government has finally succumbed to bureaucratic pressure by dramatically chopping its sales tax target from Rs. 4.300 crores to Rs. 3.950 crores, a massive cut of Rs. 350 crores, which could have an adverse impact on its budget-making exercise and welfare schemes.

The revision comes after continued refusals by the Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit, to revise the target. Interestingly, while the target has been quietly slashed by Rs. 350 crores, it is understood that the Department would not be in a position to even realise this revised target in view of the continued sluggish growth of five per cent in sales tax collections which fail to look up. In fact, no firm commitment has been forthcoming from the officials if the new target would be met by the end of this financial year which is hardly one and half months away. Adding to this is the fact that February and March are not considered fertile months for good collections.

In fact, it is learnt that the decision to revise the sales tax target from Rs. 4,300 crores to Rs. 3,950 crores, was taken after an approval from Ms. Dikshit. Refusing to fix accountability for the drastic fall in the tax collections, which could hit the various scheme of the Government during the next financial year, the Chief Minister has preferred to succumb to under-performance by a "set of bureaucrats'' who seem to have a virtual control over the day to day decisions of the Government. Such a negative development could seriously upset all calculations during the fifth year in office and show the Government, which has been maintaining right through that it had made unprecedented strides in revenue collections, in poor light.

With the down-sizing of the target by Rs. 350 crores, the Government has sought to concede the fact that it has not been able to meet the collections target fixed in the Budget and register 11 to 13 per cent growth as has been the case with the neighbouring States. What is even worse that the revision in the target comes after strong opposition was expressed by the Chief Minister on undertaking such a move and she had rejected such proposal from the Sales Tax Department on two earlier occasions. But after resisting bureaucratic pressure, the Chief Minister ultimately gave in to the continued nagging by the officials who had joined hands long back to ensure that this target of Rs. 4.300 crores was revised.

With this, the overall collection target of Rs. 5,854 also stands revised to Rs. 5,504. The sales tax collections up to January 25 stood at Rs. 3,113 crores, still way short of the revised target of Rs. 3,950 crores. The failure of the Government to achieve the sales tax target could reflect poorly on its functioning and not go down well in a crucial election year. In fact, the officials had last year also juggled figures to show that the target of Rs. 3,800 crores set for 2001-02 had been achieved. But it was later revealed that the target had fallen short by almost Rs. 160 crores and collections were wrongly credited to show an artificial achievement.

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