Despite the officials repeatedly giving statements on major steps being taken to raise the income of the Municipal Corporation of Dehradun (MCD), the civic body has no proper record of the total number of the taxpayers based in the city.
It is learnt that MCD in the past had appointed two private companies to count a total number of the houses from where tax comes under 60 wards. However both the companies had failed to complete the task. MCD, on the other hand, reeling under staff crunch, they cannot themselves undertake the work. Currently, MCD just sends reminders to the taxpayers who have been submitting it for some years. This means that the new houses or those which remained out of the records of the civic body for some reasons pay no tax to the civic body.
Quizzed over the matter, the mayor Sunil Uniyal ‘Gama’ admitted that MCD does not have the record of the houses located in 60 wards from where the tax comes. “We are planning to engage people to do the count and also collect taxes through outsourcing. This would help us keep a proper record of things and at the same time, the tax collection process would be smoother,” he said.
Speaking of the matter, the municipal commissioner Vinay Shankar Pandey said, “This is true that we do not have a proper record of the houses of the tax payers. However, steps are being taken regarding this.”
