Bengaluru residents flay BBMP's 'unfair' property tax notices

Bengaluru: In a bid to bring to the notice of the government of Karnataka, the 'unfair' tax notices issued by BBMP to lakhs of property owners, Bengaluru Navanirmana Party (BNP), on Saturday organised a physical cum virtual demonstration. While around 50 people carrying plaques raised slogans against the civic body at the BBMP head office, simultaneously 500 people took part in a virtual demonstration, demanding an immediate resolution of the issue. The demonstration was simultaneously streamed live on BNP Facebook page.

Speaking at the demonstration, Srikanth Narasimhan, Founder and General Secretary, Bengaluru Navanirmana Party said, "We have resorted to this demonstration to request the BBMP and the government of Karnataka for timely intervention in resolving the issue. We have also petitioned the Chief Minister for his intervention. While there have been assurances that the issue will be resolved, nothing concrete has happened. BBMP officers are still issuing notices to property owners in Bengaluru. This is causing a lot of angst among citizens as the interest and penalty keeps adding up every passing day. Some property owners are also ending up paying the amount under duress from the local BBMP offices.

"What we are demanding is a systemic change and complete streamlining of the whole process. We are not against reclassification or the slabs that have been fixed, but the manner in which BBMP went about the process of reclassification and revised slabs. The primary focus of this demonstration is to tell the government that it is unfair to put citizens under duress by collecting revised taxes from 2016. Instead, BBMP should scrap the existing notices and start afresh from next year by following a proper process," said Sidhartha Shetty, BNP zonal leader of Padmanabha Nagar.

"BBMP periodically reclassifies zones of various properties based on the increase in guidance value of properties across the city. One such exercise was done in 2016 when the zones of lakhs of houses were reclassified into higher categories. This was supposedly notified at that time, however a vast majority of the citizens (possibly upwards of 95% of the citizens) were or are unaware of this reclassification. This resulted in citizens ending up "underpaying" their property tax. It is almost like BBMP undertook this exercise stealthily, with no advertisements, no publicity, no circulars or emails or messages sent to property owners, no alerts at the time of making the payments and no notices issued in the same year when citizens were purportedly underpaying," said Lalithamba B V, head of campaigns, BNP.

Rishi Raghavan, head of youth wing, BNP said, "BBMP suddenly woke up this year and started issuing notices to tens of thousands of property owners with a claim of "tax evasion" and slapping penalties and interest running into tens of thousands of rupees to even lakhs of rupees. The funny part is that it is very likely that the entire city is in default and only a small portion of the citizens (about 80,000 houses) have received these notices. Understandably, citizens have been caught unawares and are in shock at this claim that they are tax-evaders and that they have to pay huge penalties and interest."

One of the protestors, Kamesh Rastogi in a tweet stated, "Enough is enough. We can't continue to let BBMP Commissioner and BBMP Admnistrator extort us with their unethical practices. Withdraw the Property Tax Penalties and Notices ASAP! Use technology well for Citizens. Thanks Namma BNP for Organizing this peace protest for our rights."