The Municipal Administration and Urban Development Department (MA & UD) has unearthed as many as 17,000 illegal constructions from among the 72-odd municipal bodies across Telangana in the last few months, thanks to the available satellite imagery of urban properties and ground-level surveys.
However, from among them only 266 properties belonging to about 13 municipal bodies have been assessed for payment of property tax this year. Of these, Mandamarri tops the list with 203 such properties followed by Bhongir 22, Medak 13, Mancherial 8, Miryalaguda 7, Ibrahimpatnam 5, Deverakonda 2 and so on with others having single digit unauthorised constructions.
As per the government directions all the unauthorised constructions attract 100% penalty on the property tax assessed. The State Property Tax Board at a meeting held recently has noticed the discrepancy in the municipal bodies not assessing all these properties and the same not reflected in the digital dashboard, according to senior officials.
‘Implement GO’
The Tax Board chaired by Director of Municipal Administration (DMA) T.K. Sreedevi has instructed the urban local bodies to see that the government orders imposing 100% penalty of property tax on all the unauthorised constructions was implemented. Also attended by Additional Director of Municipal Administration P. Anuradha, Regional Director-cum-Appellate Commissioner of Municipal Administration, Warangal, Shahid Masood, Deputy Director of Municipal Administration T.S.V.N. Thrilleshwar Rao and others, the Board was informed an amount of ₹143 crore was yet to be realised from the government departments with the matter taken up to the top quarters.
A sum of ₹32.49 crore was stuck because of 234 court cases, hence the municipal commissioners concerned have been asked to send details to the legal advisor of the Board to dispose the cases at the earliest.
The Board proposes to constitute a ‘Commission of Advocates’ or to entrust cases to the Institute of Public Auditors of India to dispose off the cases speedily to collect property tax from the petitioners. The PTB which is meeting only for the second time after it was constituted was also informed there were about 4.85 lakh assessments seeking revision of the property tax levied of which 93,195 have been modified (19.22%) helping the ULBs concerned to raise an amount of up to ₹4.29 crore.
Aadhaar seeding was done for close to 3.76 lakh properties or 30% of the 12.38 lakh properties assessed with the remaining to be done in about 8.63 lakh properies.
Proposed mergers
DMA has decided to request the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) and district collectors to furnish building permissions issued, layout permissions and land registry, among others, for the 308 gram panchayats proposed to be merged or upgraded into 68 municipalities.
