The revelation was made in reply of a short notice filed by the Chairman herself. The reply pointed finger at the BJP lawmakers in the civic agency including the Chairman. Replying to the “short notice”, the building department of the EDMC stated that majority of people involved in commercial activities fail to deposit conversion charges as the concerned department lacks infrastructure to calculate the taxable amount thus refusing to accept any money. The EDMC, in a face-saving attempt, announced a new policy allowing partial relief to the taxpayers.
Chairman Lata Gupta, during the ‘House meeting’ on Monday, said that the Corporation is occurring huge loss as it is not able to collect conversion/parking charges from people engaged in commercial activities. The Chairman said that the building department has no mechanism to collect revenue from traders/vendors and owners of commercial properties.
Meanwhile, the department personnel are busy in snatching money by putting taxpayers in the defaulters’ list. “Though there is no proper policy, taxpayers are being declared defaulters and a 10-time higher charge is being slapped. Later, the amount is being negotiated for consideration resulting revenue loss to the ailing agency. Neither physical appearance of taxpayers at collection centres are being entertained nor online facility is being provided for citizens’ comfortability,” said the Chairman.
The Chairman’s outburst over MCD officials, however, backfired when the Opposition Congress blamed inefficiency of the ruling BJP in collecting revenue from various sources. The Opposition councillors, training guns at the top brass of the BJP-led Corporation, said that it’s their (ruling party) failure for not making a proper policy as they are in power since 2007. “It is ridiculous that the Chairman, who is in her post for the past eleven and half months, is raising her voice against her failure. Being a Chairman, it is her duty to make proper policies and to execute but during the entire tenure she did not bother and now when her tenure is going to over this month she is trying to pass responsibility on the revenue collection department. If there were discrepancies they should have been detected earlier but it appears that BJP itself was busy in minting money,” said Varyam Kaur, Leader of Opposition in EDMC.
Facing flak for not making proper policy, the EDMC made several announcements regarding conversion charge collection. The Corporation said it will organise special camps to make the people aware and educate them about conversion charges and will encourage if paid on time, instead of 10 times the charge, defaulters will have to give three times only. To avoid extra burden on defaulters, the civic body has announced to do away with compound interest. “Following the controversy, it has been decided to give some relief and for this a new policy has been approved,” said Harsh Malhotra, Mayor of the EDMC.