Agra: Agra Municipal Corporation (AMC) has managed to levy only Rs 38 crore in the first eight months of this financial year against the target of Rs 55 crore for this fiscal. Now, the civic body has just seven weeks to collect the remaining Rs 17 crore.The AMC administration has issued show-cause notices to 12 officials for carelessness in recovery of house tax.According to the target, the AMC should have collected Rs 50 crore house tax by now.Last year, the state government had directed municipal corporations to become self-reliant by increasing overall revenue generation and spending funds accordingly. Following this, the municipal board of councilors had set Rs 55 crore as the targeted revenue from house tax. In the previous financial year, AMC had recovered just Rs 30 crore as house tax.According to senior councilor Ravi Mathur, “Due to malpractices in the tax department, the situation of revenue collection is very bad. Revenue inspectors are not working properly. They are not able to provide lists of commercial premises that have major dues. The civic body’s income is likely to be badly affected this year too. The matter will be raised in the next board meeting.”Councilor Rakesh Jain said, “The pace of house tax recovery is very slow. Official mismanagement is the main reason behind it. As per the current state of affairs, it will be very difficult for AMC administration to reciver 17 crore as house tax within next seven weeks.”Municipal commissioner Arun Prakash said, “Tax department officials have been warned of strict action in case of negligence towards recovery of house tax. For carelessness, notices have been issued to 12 officials. They have been asked to provide a clarification within 15 days for low recovery of taxes. They have been asked to improve in the meantime. We are making all possible efforts to complete the target assigned by the municipal board.”According to civic body records, out of the 1.80 lakh registered property owners, only 80,000 are regularly paying their taxes and have no dues pending. In the past one month, the AMC has issued notices to more than 200 commercial properties for not clearing outstanding dues. Defaulters have been warned of legal action over non-payment of house tax.

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