Nashik: With the civic body deciding to auction the properties of 50 top tax defaulters on April 25, the owners of such properties have started appealing to the officials to halt the auction and give them more time to clear the dues.Some have asked to waive off the penalty.On March 15, the Nashik Municipal Corporation (NMC) had issued notices to 90,000 property owners for various issues relating to property tax.The civic body can auction off the properties after 21 days of issuing the notices.So, the NMC has issued a public notice, announcing auctioning of the properties on April 25 at 4pm.“After we declared the date of auction, many property owners started approaching us asking for more time to pay the dues. Some have requested us to waive off the penalty,” a senior official said.“We made it very clear to the property owners that the penalty cannot be waived off. They have not paid tax for years and hence the penalty has been slapped. We have given them enough time; they should have made the payment. Some property owners made excuses like they were not using the entire property and there were others who were also using it. We asked them to sort out the differences among themselves. We had given notices to them since the properties belong to them,” said the official.In some cases, there were disputes between the owner and the tenant due to which the dues could not be paid.The municipal body said the onus to resolve such issues and pay the dues is on the owner, the official added.He said if the defaulters paid the dues even on the day of auction, their properties would not be put up for auctioning.In the auction notice, the NMC has mentioned that no pawning for the property would be entertained as it is illegal.The list of the 50 properties has been uploaded on the NMC’s official website.

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