Bangalore: Finally, information technology will come to the rescue of Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) in preventing citizens from playing truant while declaring their property taxes.
The help is coming in the form of former key players in Infosys – Mohandas Pai and Shrinivias Mallamputy.
Pai, who is currently the chairman of Manipal Global education, was on the board of directors of Infosys, besides heading its finance and later, thehuman resources function.
Mallamputy was delivery head and business development manager at Infosys.
Pai and Mallamputy are roping in some former Infosys techies to develop appropriate software and work directly with BBMP commissioner M Lakshminarayana.
Pai and his former colleagues will assist BBMP’s revenue and IT department officials as part of the streamlining process. The software will give precise details on how much of tax needs to be collected and from whom.
This will make it extremely difficult for those thinking of hoodwinking the BBMP by providing reduced payable tax figures under the present self-assessment scheme (SAS). BBMP commissioner M Lakshminarayana said that the work had begun and it would be completed in a month’s time. “Then we will take a final call on its launch in all the eight (BBMP) zones, simultaneously,” he said.
The cash-strapped BBMP has been mainly relying on property tax collection as major revenue, but has faced a major setback this year.
The civic agency is heading for a situation wherein it would be unable to meet the tax collection targets for financial year 2014-15.
So far, it has collected around Rs 1,300 crore in property taxes while chief minister Siddaramaiah has set the civic agency a target of Rs 3,000 crore. The chief minister is due to review the property tax collection in January 2015.
With alarm bells ringing in the background, BBMP found a saviour in Pai. Commissioner Lakshminarayana told Bangalore Mirror, “I called him (Pai) for discussions, hoping to stabilise a lot of issues pertaining to BBMP’s bank accounts. Pai will be sending two people to assist me directly in streamlining the bank accounts. There are multiple accounts of BBMP. Presently, more than 530 accounts are being handled by multitudes of people, and we are losing track of the precise amounts due.”
Pai confirmed the development. “I told the BBMP commissioner about less property tax being collected in city, and that if Bangalore has to develop fully then it has to revise it. To provide better infrastructure we need better tax payments and we are trying to help out.”
He said BBMP has multiple IT applications available to it. “All of them will be merged. In the present scenario, we are declaring property tax under the SAS. For this process, BBMP doesn’t have any data or demand notes. With our software, BBMP will issue the demand (a formal request for payments) along with theissuance of occupancy certificates and commencement certificates.
Further the software will also indicate the list of property owners who have paid property tax and the list of defaulters.”
He said people were purposely making false declarations under the SAS “and now BBMP is conducting a survey to create a demand note (a formal request for payments).
There are 25 lakh properties in Bangalore and only owners of 15 lakh have paid. The amount collected can be doubled if there is proper accounting.”
A committee has been formed to see this work through. BBMP’s IT advisor T Sheshadri said the committee is working directly with the commissioner and will give suggestions to stabilise BBMP’s accounting system.
“The committee’s job is not just to study and submit a report but come with solutions on what needs to be done with procedures. This will help BBMP streamline the accounting system.”
“Once this software is ready we will recruit special accounting personnel who will assist our own staff, ” he added.
Following that, BBMP’s various departments will be directly linked by the software to make accounting and maintaining a list of defaulters convenient and quick, he said.
