NASHIK: The Nashik Municipal Corporation’s (NMC) move to play the drums in front of the properties of big tax defaulters yielded good results as the civic body recovered Rs 75 lakh from the tax defaulters on the first day on Monday

The NMC has started sending its teams to the homes and commercial establishments of big defaulters to collect pending property tax dues from Monday. The drums are being played in requesting them to pay the dues.

NMC officials said drums were played in front of the houses of 73 tax defaulters. Around 40 of the tax defaulters paid their tax dues amounting to Rs 74 crore to the civic body on the first

The exercise will continue at regular intervals till the end of this fiscal so that these big defaulters pay the dues. There are over 1,200 big defaulters who have outstanding property tax dues of over Rs 50 crore.

“Our repeated pleas to the defaulters to clear their pending property tax was yielding no results. Hence, we have started playing the drums in front of their houses to name and shame them for not clearing the dues,” said an official.

NMC’s property tax department has set a target of Rs 250 crore, including 100 crore pending dues from the defaulters during the current financial year 2022-23. However, during the last five months, the total collection was only Rs 90 crore.

Moreover, the civic body has also made the names of 600 big property tax defaulters public as part of its name-and-shame drive. The civic body has uploaded the list of 600 defaulters on its official website and requested them to clear their dues at the earliest. These 600 defaulters owe over Rs 40 crore to the civic body, ranging from Rs 1 lakh to over Rs 20 lakh.