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PMC tells residents not to pay property dues till further orders
After messages sent on August 23 by the tax collection department of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) to around 60,000 property owners asking them to pay their dues shocked and confused them, the civic body issued a clarification stating that residents need not pay the additional dues till further orders
After messages sent on August 23 by the tax collection department of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) to around 60,000 property owners asking them to pay their dues shocked and confused them, the civic body issued a clarification stating that residents need not pay the additional dues till further orders.
Aniruddh Pashane, IT engineer, said, “I had already paid my property tax in May but was shocked when I received an SMS from the PMC on Tuesday. The message asked me to pay dues, which are around Rs13,000. This is pure harassment by the PMC when it cannot even provide basic amenities.”
Payal Chandekar said, “In April this year, we had received an inflated property bill. However, we paid that within the May 31 deadline to avail the 5% rebate. Now again, we have received an SMS to pay dues.”
Not just Pashane and Chandekar but around 60,000 property owners were shocked and angered by the PMC tax collection department’s August 23 SMS as they had already paid property tax during summer. Subsequently, PMC additional commissioner Kunal Khemnar on Wednesday sent a message saying, “We appeal to the citizens of Pune not to pay the additional dues asked through the text messages sent on August 23 by the tax collection department besides the regular property tax till further decision.”
Pune municipal commissioner Vikram Kumar, too, separately appealed to the citizens not to pay the arrears despite receiving the messages that had been sent inadvertently. “The citizens need not pay the arrears till further decision is taken,” Kumar said in his message.
Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), along with citizens and civic activists, has now demanded that the notices sent by the tax collection department of the PMC be permanently scrapped and that the 40% rebate be restored. With civic elections round-the-corner, political parties such as the BJP - which had been controlling the PMC till recently - cannot afford to invite the citizens’ wrath.
BJP leader Ujwal Keskar said, “It is the failure of elected members as they did not follow up on the issue with the state government. The standing committee of the PMC had every right to write-off the arrears. As there are no elected members currently after their term has expired and only the commissioner is working as an administrator, he should write-off the dues.”
Whereas BJP spokesperson Sandeep Khardekar wrote a letter to chief minister Eknath Shinde and deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, requesting that the 40% rebate be restored in Pune.
Civic activist Vivek Velankar said, “As per the state government’s instruction, the 40% concession in property tax should continue and the municipal commissioner should write the same to the government. Property owners who are living in their own houses were getting this 40% concession in tax since 1970.”
Since the Panshet dam floods in 1970, the PMC was offering a 40% rebate to owners who stayed put in their own houses instead of renting out their properties. While owners were unable to pass the benefits to tenants. This policy was in place only in Pune and no other city in Maharashtra. Later, following the auditor’s report, the state government in 2019 scrapped the discount and directed the PMC to recover the dues from residential properties with retrospective effect. Thereafter, the PMC administration placed a proposal to restore the rebate before the general body and the general body passed a resolution that was sent to the state government in 2021. However, the state government rejected it. In the interim, the PMC also wrote to the state government requesting the latter not to recover concession arrears but implement it from this year.
