The Times of India 01.12.2010
Receipt scam rocks KMC
KOLKATA: The Gariahat treasury scam sent shockwaves in Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) five years ago. Now, a new, massive scam could rock the civic body yet again.
Take a good look at your property tax receipt and mutation certificate. Chances are they could be fake.
On Tuesday, some senior KMC treasury department officials learnt about a racket operating from Behala that issues forged tax receipts and fake mutation certificates. The civic authorities have decided to lodge an FIR on Wednesday.
The racket was discovered when a woman went to the KMC E-Centre in Behala (Borough XIV) on Tuesday afternoon to verify a tax receipt and a mutation certificate and ask for duplicate ones. The KMC employee at the counter recognised the receipt and mutation certificate as fake.
He asked the woman to submit all the documents in original. After a careful verification, it was found that the property tax bill was issued on June 23 under a fake code. The bill issued for a flat located at 71 Panchanantala had some differences to a genuine one which helped the clerk identify it as fake.
First, though it has the KMC emblem in the middle, the bar code is shorter than a genuine one. “The signature of the treasurer had clearly been forged and does not match the original one. The quality of the paper is also inferior. However, there is no way an ordinary tax payer can differentiate between an original receipt and a fake one,” said an official. “It was an alert KMC employee and a foolproof system now developed at the KMC E-centres that helped identify the fake tax receipt. The mutation certificate which is issued based on the submission of the latest tax receipt, has also been forged.”
A preliminary investigation revealed that Harjeet Singh bought the flat at Panchanantala from Tapan Mukherjee, six months ago. Singh then entrusted a middleman to clear the pending tax bills of his flat and get the mutation done. Singh verified the tax receipt and the mutation certificate at the KMC assessment office at Taratala. Surprisingly, the KMC employees at the Taratala office certified the documents to be true. However, Singh sent his wife to the KMC E-Centre on Tuesday after a neighbour advised him to get his documents checked since some flat owners had complained of fake tax receipts.
The assistant treasurer at the KMC E-Centre at Behala rushed to the KMC headquarters with the fake documents. After a second round of careful examination it was proved beyond doubt that a racket was operating in Behala much as the Gariahat scam was run with the help of some KMC assessment department employees.
“It is a very serious matter. We will conduct an inquiry to trace the root of this racket,” Bhaskar Ghosh, chief manager of the KMC revenue department, said on Tuesday.
A section of KMC assessment department officials, however, alleged that despite the major scam at Gariahat treasury five years ago, the civic authorities failed to book the errant civic officials and transfer them to other non-revenue departments. “The scam at Behala, unearthed on Tuesday, could have been averted had the civic top brass opted for some changes in the KMC assessment department to break a racket still operative at Gariahat, Jadavpur and Behala,” a KMC assessment department official said.
