Bhubaneswar: The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) Wednesday issued a Red Corner Notice against 284 individuals or firms for defaulting on a tax amount of Rs 9.01 crore.
If the defaulters are not paying the demand amount of holding tax by March 31, BMC shall take action as per the Odisha Public Demands Recovery (OPDR) Act, 1962, to collect the money as per the provisions laid under the purview of the stringent Act.
Certificate cases are filed against the defaulters of government money under the OPDR Act. If a certificate case is filed against a person and if he continues to ignore it, stringent steps like attaching bank accounts and movable and immovable property could be initiated till the defaulter pays the amount.
It may be mentioned here that holding tax collection up to the third quarter of this financial year till date is Rs 14.51 crore while the tax collection during the last fiscal was Rs 35.7 crore only.
As per the BMC notification issued Wednesday, Rs 2, 52, 18, 856.00 has been defaulted by city-based Apex Engineering College, Pahala. The lowest belongs to one `10, 016 from a house of Ashok Bhagat and others are at Rudrapur. Meanwhile, the civic body has taken the help of Orissa Space Applications Centre (ORSAC) to digitise the holdings across the city and to double-check with ground survey so that not a single holding is missed out from the holding tax net.
Once implemented with full force, the satellite-based application would help the civic authorities to raise the collection several times in the near future.
PNN
