Unlawful structures vanish from taxmen’s books

Hyderabad: High levels of corruption in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has come to light. The GHMC carried out a comprehensive survey and identified around 1.2 lakh unauthorised structures in the city. But when it came to collect the tax from the unauthorised structures, the number of such constructions have come down to just 2,000.

According to a senior GHMC official, all the Deputy Commissioner were given the task of identifying the unauthorised structures. The field level staff had carried out survey and identified the structures which were constructed on the government and Wakf lands.

The State government had directed the GHMC to collect “super structure tax” on these unauthorised structures. The government had in fact issued a GO 299 on December 20 last year in this regard.

When asked about the corruption reports, Additional Commissioner J Shankeraiah said he was not aware of the alleged manipulation. He would verify the reports.

The official also said that the GHMC will only levy the property tax and penalty on the structure but not on the land. The official said GHMC has named it as the 'Super Structure tax' and it would not bestow on ownership of the property.

But, according to highly-placed sources in the GHMC, the civic body had asked the field level staff to levy 100 per cent penalty on all unauthorised constructions.

It was estimated that the penalty would fetch of Rs 50 crore revenue to the civic body. The officials asked the field level staff to issue pink colour receipts to the owners of the illegal constructions. Both penalty and tax was imposed on the illegal structures.

Sources said the higher officials suspected that the field level staff could have worked hand in glove with the owners of the illegal constructions and thus helped majority of them to avoid tax and penalty. A high-level inquiry would be ordered into the episode, sources said.