GHMC commissioner Somesh Kumar has directed the zonal commissioners, special officers and deputy commissioners to focus on top 1,000 defaulters from whom 80 p.c. of the property tax is due but constitute just 20 p.c. of owners.

The commissioner held a review meeting with officials here on Saturday and directed them to work more proactively, strategically and collectively at all levels while collecting property tax, concentrate more on huge dues. He said Rs 243 crore had to be collected from the top 1,000 defaulters.

He said that Rs 1,779 crore is the demand for 2013-14 and the target is Rs 1,232 crore but the GHMC collected only Rs 500 crore till January 3. He said 41 percent of the target is the GHMC’s average collection and nine circles collected below the average. These are Circles 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 17.

He said that only 86 days were left for the end of the financial year and the GHMC had to collect Rs 831 lakh a day to meet the target and asked the deputy commissioners to reorganise bill collectors by allotting equal docket numbers to each bill collector.  The commissioner said that he would review the property tax collection every week and  directed them to set Feb15 as the deadline and should not wait till March 31. There are only 45 days more left in that case.

He asked all the valuation officers to furnish the list of pending legal cases to the head office along with their PTIN numbers in three days. Kumar directed zonal commissioners to furnish the list of issues related to property tax by Monday morning.