The Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation (BMC) will start sending property tax notices in the next few days informing residents of all 41 Wards to clear their pending taxes, officials of the civic body said.
The notices will ask residents to pay their dues and outstanding tax arrears at the earliest, a senior official of the civic body said.
The BMC with its headquarters in Salt Lake is in charge of providing civic services in Salt Lake, areas off VIP Road like Kestopur, Baguiati, Kaikhali, Teghoria, parts of Rajarhat and several Wards that border the East Calcutta Wetlands.
According to a civic official, the collection of property taxes, especially in areas adjoining VIP Road like Baguiati, Kestopur, Teghoria and Rajarhat, has been quite low.
The notices to pay tax arrears at the earliest are likely to be sent out in the next few days, said a senior BMC official.
“We will appeal to the residents to pay their outstanding tax bills at the earliest. We need to increase our revenue collection. In some places residents have not paid their taxes since the corporation was formed back in 2015,” said a senior BMC official.
In a bid to increase revenue, the corporation decided a few months back to charge property tax from residents of Wards 27, 28, 35 and 36, consisting of Mahishbathan, Nayapatti, Thakdari and Chhainabhi which are essentially settlements bordering the bheris behind Chingrighata and are part of the East Calcutta Wetlands.
Residents of these places would so far pay khajna to the land reforms department as they had been part of the Mahisbathan II gram panchayat.
The areas were added to the existing Wards of Salt Lake to form the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation in 2015.
“We have brought these areas under the property tax ambit as we are the ones that are providing all civic services here yet have not collected anything in terms of taxes," Debraj Chakraborty, one of the mayoral council members of the BMC, said.
The civic body collected around Rs 33 crore from property tax and mutation fees this financial year. The authorities aim to collect Rs 40 crore from property tax in the next financial year.