The Indian Express                       02.04.2013

Property tax: Deadline over, no decision on unit values

Joint commissioner says people will have to pay tax from April 1.

The Municipal Corporation and district administration, after making a lot of fuss over the proposed property tax and setting the deadline of April 1 for the implementation of the same, on Monday failed to fix the unit values and complete the survey by the deadline.

"The property tax will not be fully implemented before September as the survey is yet to be done in a majority of areas. There are many other changes which are being considered at the top level in its structure," said an MC officer, requesting anonymity.

However, when contacted, joint commissioner P S Ghuman, who had earlier said that there would be no delay in implementation of tax and DC would call a meeting to fix unit values soon, on Monday told Ludhiana Newsline, "Due to some unavoidable reasons, finalisation of zoning and unit values is still pending but this does not mean that tax implementation has been delayed. Whenever the values are finalised, people will have to pay tax from April 1 only which means that their tax will be calculated from April 1."

However, the mystery over the actual position of property tax proposal still remains a mystery as Congress MLA Bharat Bhushan Ashoo had something different and interesting to share.

Ashoo said, "Government is altogether re-considering the whole proposal under Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal. But one thing is final that the tax will be implemented for sure. It is the efforts of Congress which have borne fruit as it was only after meeting with DC in which we did not allow unit values to be finalised as they were too high, that the proposal is being re-considered all over by committee of some MLAs under Deputy Chief Minister."

He added that after a particular meeting, DC has called no other meeting or taken any action.

Ashoo added that the government was looking at all options to simplify the whole structure of tax to a maximum level and reduce tax values to a minimum for residential areas.

"Now a discussion will be held only after committee gives out its new scheme. Till then nothing is on cards for Ludhiana," he said.

Deputy Commissioner Rahul Tewari was not available for comment.