We recently concluded a successful property tax drive at our apartment complex, Rohan Vasantha in Marathahalli.
Initially, we had contacted the BBMP helpline and got guidance on how to fill the form. However, certain points like zone classifications were not clear.
So we contacted the BBMP officials, Assistant Commissioner Vasanth Rao and Deputy Commisioner Heera Naik. My neighbours Avinash Kalmani, Vasanth Kelkar, Nitin Kabra & I (Keshav Prabhu) met them. They helped us fill one form. We sent the reference form to all residents in our community of 540 houses.
We got 300 forms and kept it in the club house. For one whole week, we volunteers spent an hour every evening, from 9 PM to 10 PM helping residents fill the form using the reference form.
Vasanth Rao directed BBMP officials from Mahadevpura CMC to support us. About eight BBMP employees including the tax inspector and revenue officers came last Sunday morning. They were there all day till 4 PM, verifying each form and issuing acknowledgements and receipts which were put in the respective resident’s drop box.
Mahadevpura CMC did not have computerised process and residents made some mistakes in filling the forms, like not rounding off their payment amounts. Since this was the first time for making payments for all residents and we did not have khata, we enclosed a copy of the sale’s deed along with location map with our payments as mentioned in BBMP circular.
Finally around 290 forms were submitted (BBMP’s collection was about Rs.10-11 lakhs). Around 20 forms were sent back for correction. All were attended and rectified.
BBMP officials were really helpful and we would have faced many more challenges without their support and guidance.
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Excellent initiative. We too tried something like this in our apartment. But a sum of Rs.100 per form was talked about, and therefore, we dropped the initiative. The booklet costs Rs.20, and the form Rs.5. We were afraid that the balance of Rs.75 would be divided up between the BBMP clerks and our building association manager! So each of us had to brave the queues and the challenges individually!