Prayagraj: Only 9.19% clear house tax dues under OTS scheme

PRAYAGRAJ: Hardly nine percent house owners have deposited their house tax under the one time settlement (

OTS

) scheme till now.

Though the OTS scheme is valid till March 31, only 7,034 out of 76,490 house owners (9.19 per cent) have deposited the house taxes to the tune of Rs 7.75 crore, claimed the figures released by the authorities of

Prayagraj Municipal Corporation

(

PMC

) on Monday.

The authorities have sent individual letters comprising all details to as many as 76,490 defaulting house owners with an appeal to clear the pending house tax dues under the OTS scheme or face strict measures once the date of OTS scheme was over. However, there was an unsatisfactory response from the house owners till now.

PMC chief tax assessment officer P K Mishra, told TOI, “We have collected total house tax to the tune of Rs 7.75 crore after as many as 7,034 house owners had taken the benefit of OTS scheme and paid the pending dues.”

He, however, said that PMC has sent individual letters to as many as 76,490 house owners whose house taxes were pending since long and only 9.19% of them have turned to deposit the tax till date.

The OTS scheme, launched on January 1 this year, will be ending on March 31.

There were as many as 2,23,489 houses registered with the Prayagraj Municipal Corporation (PMC) authorities. However, PMC authorities have written letters to a total of 76,490 house owners who have not submitted house taxes for a long time.

The PMC authorities claimed to have prepared the list of defaulters zone wise and found that over 76,000 house owners had not paid their house tax dues ranging from three year to 10 years.

Mishra, meanwhile, said that a total of 7,034 house owners including 1,485 (zone 1), 1,000 (zone 2), 1,326 (zone 3), 1,202 (zone 4), 616 (zone 5), 1,315 (zone 6) and 90 (zone 7) had taken the benefit of OTS scheme and they had been given rebate worth more than Rs 5 crore.

The highest collection of taxes under OTS scheme was recorded in zone 3 (Rs 1.67 crore) followed by zone 5 (Rs 1.48 crore), zone 1 (Rs 1.32 crore), zone 6 (Rs 1.07 crore), zone 2 (Rs 1.00 crore) and zone 7 (Rs 7.54 lakh).

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