VIJAYAWADA: Even as several corporators of the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP) along with the opposition party leaders are opposing the move to levy fines on public, the revenue wing officials of Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) have started serving notices to the residents to pay annual property tax in the first quarter of the current fiscal which ended on Saturday.
‘’Earlier, the State Government allowed civic bodies to collect property tax from people for every six months. With the new guidelines, people are forced to pay an annual property tax by June 30. How can the Commissioner and Directorate of Municipal Administration (CDMA) take this unilateral decision without giving any prior intimation to the public,” said YSRC VMC floor leader, B Punyaseela. She also took a dig at the CDMA for diluting the powers of local bodies through issuing notices to the people and charging hefty penalties from them. People will teach a lesson to the government if it continues to burden them in the name of taxes, the YSRC leader said.
According to VMC officials, the CDMA has directed civic body authorities to serve a notice to the people mentioning that 24 per cent penalty will be imposed on them from July 1, if they failed to pay their taxes on time, as per Hyderabad Municipal Act 1955. A senior official of VMC, on condition of anonymity, told Express that recently, city mayor Koneru Sreedhar met CDMA officials and explained to them the adverse effect of serving notices and imposing fines on people who failed to pay annual property tax in the first quarter of the current fiscal.
A special council meeting will be conducted in next few days to discuss the terms of reference over imposing fines, he said. ‘’How can the VMC officials serve notices to people in May, and announce a 5 per cent tax exemption to those paying the annual property tax for the year 2018-19 in advance, by the end of April,” CPM State executive member Ch Babu Rao questioned.