Delhi housing surveyors face threats to life as residents try to evade taxes

Delhi's municipal bodies have been struggling to complete their ambitious door-to-door survey to provide a 'Unique Property Identification Card' (UPIC) to each land owner since year 2014. Residents trying to evade taxes by every means is the reason behind.

Officials say it is not just North MCD, where outlaws in unauthorised colonies, slums and villages come down to threats and mob violence with the surveyors. Even south MCD, with its posh areas and high-profile markets, is facing the issue.

Recently, teams sent by SDMC were denied entry into several gated housing societies in Dwarka. Few weeks back, they were even beaten black-and-blue in Shahpur Jat.

Before that, residents in Sangam Vihar called up the police when surveyors reached to assess the kothis, number of floors therein, their usage and ownership.

Radha Krishnan, assessor and collector of SDMC, said, "Just like Mosquito Breeding Checkers, property surveyors have also been given uniforms and ID cards. Inspite of showing those, they were dragged to the police station."

House tax is the biggest source of revenue for the cash-strapped MCDs. The south MCD, which is an exception with surplus money, earned Rs 900 crore from this tax in financial year 2016-17 - much more than what it drew from advertising, parking or toll.

This is inspite of the fact that only 4.5 lakh property owners are currently paying tax in this part of Delhi out of total 19 lakh premises.

The UPIC scheme, combined with the physical house-to-house survey and GIS (Geographical Information Service) mapping, aims to chart out all property owners in the city. Their records will then be digitised to send tax notices easily, recover dues and avoid any discrepancy.

In north MCD too, the UPIC exercise has slowed down for the same reasons, said Dr. Renu Jagdev, additional commissioner, NMCD.

"It's sad that people carry this mentality to not cooperate with the government and pay taxes for their own welfare. In Kohat Enclave recently, people broke the expensive tablets with our surveyors that we had provided them for observations. People have also misbehaved with our officers in Wazirpur, Pitampura and Civil Lines," she added.

NMCD is severely money-starved. It has a liability of Rs 3,600 crore, including salary bills of its employees and payments to contractors. Again, even for NMCD, house tax is a crucial source of money. It earned Rs 613 crore from the same in 2016-17, as compared to Rs 364 crore in 2015-16, which Jagdev attributed to the door-to-door survey.

Since 2014, NMCD has mapped seven lakh of its estimated 12-13 lakh properties. East MCD is yet to start this exercise and has reportedly, just floated a tender to hire a private company to do a survey in the trans-Yamuna area.

Of all the cities and towns in India, the Pune, Hyderabad and Bengaluru municipal corporations are considered the best in terms of property tax coverage. These, reportedly, have almost 90 per cent of their residents in the tax net. Delhi has fallen way behind them in terms of having all property owners in the tax ambit.