Amid fund constraints that forced the civic body to take steps to go on cost cutting in certain areas, mayor of Kolkata Municipal Corporation Firhad Hakim urged councillors to stay updated on unassessed properties within their limits and report it to the municipal cor- poration to help increase revenue.
The mayor asked the councillors to identify in their wards if there were any bulk cases of unassessed properties so that the KMC could take steps to collect them. The announcement came after councillor ofWard 132 Sanchita Mitra brought a proposal before the KMC to take steps to do the assessment of more than 300 flats in her area. According to the councillor, around 384 flats at Upen Banerjee Road in Parnasree were government quarters. Presently, the flats are occupied by individuals as private properties.
Despite the fact, the flats have been assessed while services by the KMC are being provided to those properties and their occupants.
The councillor also pointed out that in a few cases the taxes being paid were not in sync with the areas of the flats.
Replying to the proposal, the mayor of KMC said that the government quarters in this area were of the housing department. Later, assessment of some of the properties in this part was also carried out in the year 2016-17. The mayor added that inspections of the flats would be con- ducted to evaluate taxes as per the unit area assessment system. A camp would be organised in the ward for assessment.
The mayor urged the other councillors also to identify if there were unassessed properties in their wards and write to the KMC about it. According to Mr Hakim, this would help the civic body to gener- ate more revenue from property taxes.
Meanwhile, the mayor is to hit the streets from 13 October to conduct an inspection of the repair works being carried out. The civic body is carrying out the repair works of damaged roads in the city on war footing, aiming to complete those before the Pujas.