HYDERABAD: In what seems to be a case of good intentions with unpleasant outcomes, the government making Panchayat Secretaries responsible for collecting all the taxes under the Telangana Panchayat Raj Act-2018 has caused trouble to both the officials and the tax-payers.
The officials are deemed removed from the office if they fail to collect taxes. This has forced the Panchayat Secretaries to go all out in making people pay taxes. They are pestering the poor in villages to pay house tax immediately and are even threatening them saying their names would be removed from the Aasara beneficiary list.
Recently, Panchayat Secretary of Karankote village in Vikarabad district, Y Ananda Rao, stood outside the post office where pensioners had come to get their pension and demanded that they pay taxes. He threatened them that he would ensure that their names were removed from the pension list if they fail to pay the tax dues immediately.
While about 10 people paid the dues on the spot fearing consequences, several others, irked over the attitude of the official, staged a dharna. Only after the local leaders intervened in the matter, the villagers withdrew their protest.
Speaking to Express, Ananda Rao said there was tremendous pressure on them to collect the taxes. However, he denied standing outside the post office to collect the tax dues. "I went around the village and collected taxes from people who had received their pension," he said.
Meanwhile, the Forum for Good Governance vice-president Rao Chelikani opined that the government making bureaucrats responsible for collecting the taxes is a good idea. "Three-fourth of the country’s revenue comes from urban areas. Almost half of the revenue being collected is spent on rural development. To make the local governing bodies sustainable, tax collection is important. Such a mechanism should be in place for providing better services to people," he said.
However, since some officers are threatening people with removing their names from the list of welfare schemes, awareness should be created in the villages about the importance of paying taxes on time.