Ghaziabad: Ghaziabad city mayor Asha Sharma Monday fired another salvo at the officials of the Ghaziabad municipal corporation by sending a letter to the municipal commissioner, along with a copy to the district magistrate and the divisional commissioner (Meerut), accusing municipal officials of tax evasion amounting to ₹50 crore.
The accusations came after the mayor recently sought the transfer of municipal commissioner Dinesh Chandra and wrote to chief minister Yogi Adityanath, besides other state ministers.
She had said that the city was bound to fare badly in the ongoing ‘Swacch Survekshan- 2020’ due to the negligence of the civic body officials.
“I have written to senior officials about the issue of tax evasion of about ₹50-60 crore. I have come to know that residents having small households are taxed while big commercial establishments, educational institutions, malls, etc are taxed leniently. I reported two or three such cases to officials but they overlooked them and also did not send files to me. The issue of lesser tax recovery has been raised time and again but to no avail,” she alleged.
“There are instances wherein tax has been levied recently on properties that existed since long and in some cases, commercial properties have been levied only residential property taxes, which is very less. In other cases, the annual rental value was shown as less than the actual amount. This leads to a lesser tax burden. I fail to understand the reason behind these actions. It should be our intent to increase revenue and a satellite survey by an external agency should be conducted to understand the real situation,” Sharma said.
{{/usCountry}}“There are instances wherein tax has been levied recently on properties that existed since long and in some cases, commercial properties have been levied only residential property taxes, which is very less. In other cases, the annual rental value was shown as less than the actual amount. This leads to a lesser tax burden. I fail to understand the reason behind these actions. It should be our intent to increase revenue and a satellite survey by an external agency should be conducted to understand the real situation,” Sharma said.
{{/usCountry}}According to officials, the corporation collects an annual tax of about ₹120-130 crore. During the last financial year, the corporation’s tax collection was ₹132 crore.
“I have sent a reply on the issue raised by the mayor. We have witnessed an increase of about ₹37 crore in revenue since I joined (in February). We have managed to bring an additional 30,000 households under the tax net. If the mayor offers any facts on the tax evasion issue, we will conduct an inquiry into her allegations,” Chandra said.
Earlier, Sharma had written to the chief minister seeking Chandra’s transfer. He allegedly reacted by seeking approval from the state government for the rent for the mayor’s new camp office.
Sharma’s new camp office has come up in a villa at a prime locality in Raj Nagar and the monthly expenses on running it, including rent and other facilities, comes to about ₹1.13 lakh.
Sharma had said she will pay the monthly rent out of her own pocket till the time approval is received from the state government.