Engineering colleges fail to pay property taxes to panchayats

Rajamahendravaram: Government's apathy and lethargy of officials are said to be the main reasons for accumulating crores of property taxes dues relating to engineering colleges located in the rural areas of East Godavari district.

• The colleges located in rural areas of East Godavari district have not been paying property taxes for more than a decade 
• The total outstanding dues in the district amount to Rs 61.32 cr pertaining to 85 colleges
• Panchayat Raj department prepares an action plan to collect the dues 

Several engineering colleges are related to political leaders and they are not paying the taxes to the respective panchayats, despite repeated reminders from the panchayat officials. The engineering college managements are just ignoring panchayat secretaries who go there for collection of taxes. 

Several managements constructed huge buildings in thousands of square yards in rural areas and some of them are not having proper plans.  According to sources of Panchayat Raj department, the total out- standing dues accumulated to a tune of Rs 61.32 crore pertaining to 85 colleges located in various panchayats. Of this amount, Rs 54,63,78,658 belongs to Rajamahendravaram Panchayat Raj division relating to 18 engineering colleges.  

All these dues are pending from the year 2008-2009 in the district.  The village panchayats imposed 13 per cent of tax on the total area based  on the value suggested by sub-registrar from the year 2016-17. 

Before the year 2017, respective village panchayats used to enhance five per cent tax per annum. With this, the college managements approached High Court seeking justice and some colleges paid property tax.

With regard to Rajamahendravaram Panchayat division, 18 engineering colleges are located in Palacharla, Bhupathipatnam, Diwanchervu, Velugubanda, Rajanagaram, Thokada, East Gonagudem, Krishnunipalem, Kamarajupeta, Gokavaram, Kolamuru and Burugupudi villages. The engineering colleges having dues from Rs 1 crore to Rs 7 crore.

The villages will be developed a lot if the engineering colleges pay their outstanding property dues regularly.  At the same time, the colleges are collecting lakhs of rupees in the form of fee from the students and try to evade the taxes.

The department is devising an action plan to collect the property tax dues and also taking the issue to the notice of higher officials in the government. Meanwhile, Collector Karthikeya Misra also concentrated in this issue and directed the respective panchayats to collect outstanding amounts from the engineering colleges.

By S S Chary