Ask head office: Bengaluru ward officials sidestep duties as e-khata complaints pile up
Frustrated citizens say local revenue officials have washed their hands off, leaving the BBMP head office as the new centre for resolving civic mess-ups.
Across the city, citizens are queuing up at the BBMP head office, clutching documents and grievance letters, often for the first time in their lives. "I have lived in my apartment for 27 years and never missed a single property tax payment," said Srihari Jakathi, a retired HAL engineer from Vidyaranyapura.
"Now, suddenly, I'm being labelled a defaulter. My car parking area, which has always been 75 sqft, is now shown as 147 sqft in the BBMP record.
I haven't changed my car in years — I still drive the same Maruti Zen!"
When Jakathi approached the local revenue office for help, he was dismissed without assistance. "The officer asked me to go to the head office, saying they have nothing to do with this. If I must go to the head office for everything, why have revenue officials at the ward-level at all?"
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His concerns echo across neighbourhoods.
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Anita Suresh, a resident of Mahadevapura, said: "I received a showcause notice saying my flat had undeclared parking, but I declared everything properly when I bought the flat in 2012. When I tried contacting the revenue officer, they didn't pick up calls for three days. When I finally got through, they said the head office is handling all this. This isn't governance, it's negligence.
"
TOI reached out to an assistant revenue officer in the tech hub of Mahadevapura at 1.09pm for clarity.
The officer said: "There are some teething problems, and it's okay to have an issue now; they can go and appeal, and it will get resolved. We are not responsible for this; only the head office is sending these showcause notices in our name. You should go and ask the special commissioner of revenue. We don't know anything about it.
"
Across Bengaluru, the ARO staff are directing affected citizens to the BBMP head office saying the showcause notices were not generated at their office and they could do little in the matter.
The BBMP's head office generated thousands of notices and mailed to citizens in the names of jurisdictional AROs, officials said.
Sections of officials TOI spoke to said they cannot explain how the figures of additional tax demands had been arrived at, but they have been getting a steady stream of visitors with grievances every day.
A retired PSU official said he did not get sleep after being called a tax evader by the BBMP though he never missed on payment of central or state taxes within deadline. BBMP has neither opened a helpline nor a helpdesk at its office to deal with citizen complaints.
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