Ward officers ordered to submit list of properties affected in road widening for tax reduction

Aurangabad, Oct 12:

The assessor and collector of tax (ACT) section at Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has ordered all the nine ward officers to submit the list of properties that had been affected due to the widening of the roads in the city, and the tax levied upon them, by October 14.

It may be noted that the AMC has acquired many properties to undertake myriad development works including road-widening. However, the administration has released compensation to a few of them only. However, as per the norms, the AMC was supposed to waive off total property tax or reduce (depending upon the size of acquisition), but the civic authorities continue collecting property tax as per the old system. Hence the ACT has decided to verify the facts and take an appropriate decision.

A meeting to review property tax and water tax collection was held today under the chairmanship of the additional commissioner B B Nemane. The meeting expressed concern when it came to notice that the demand note of the current year's property tax has not been served to the property-holders due to various issues including the double-entry of properties. Hence, the ward officers were ordered to send the list of such double entries with corrections for cancellation (of one entry) to the special cell of ACT by October 14.

The ward officers were also directed to utilise their resources and complete all the postal addresses of the properties. They were guided to conduct panchanama if the properties do not exist and such files with panchanama report to the ACT section.

As reported earlier, time and again the AMC has undertaken the task of widening the roads in the city. The then municipal commissioner P N Bhapkar undertook to widen nine important roads in which around 250-300 properties were affected. However, these project-affected property-holders demanded to grant concession in property tax, but their pleas went unheard, even after submitting to the past municipal commissioners. Hence, the ACT has ordered each ward office to send the detailed list of properties affected due to road widening in their respective jurisdictions.