Mayor Firhad Hakim has instructed the Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s assessment department officials that mutation files should not remain pending with them for more than 15 days.
The mayor also asked the officials to see that more people could complete their mutation or property tax payments online and did not have to visit civic offices.
Hakim met the assessment department officials at the Town Hall on Wednesday.
“No official should keep a mutation file pending with them for over 15 days. Pass the file to your seniors if you can’t decide on any application. This way, decisions on complicated matters can be taken faster,” said Hakim.
While simple mutations like changing the title of ownership to the legal heir or from one sibling to another can be completed with a single visit to the KMC office, other mutations take a lot of time. In most of these cases, the absence of documents is often the root cause of the delay.
“Suppose a property has changed hands multiple times. We will need the chain of deeds to ascertain if the last deed presented to us is genuine or fake. But often, the chain of deeds is not available. In most cases where mutation gets delayed, the required documents are unavailable,” said a senior KMC official.
Unable to decide whether to complete the mutation process, officials tend to delay the decision and start working on other matters.
The mayor advised a change in this attitude. “If required, send the file to the chief manager. If the chief manager is also unable to decide, send the file to the commissioner and me. But the decision must be taken,” Hakim told officials.
Hakim also told the officials that they should encourage more people to complete their property tax payments or mutations online so that they can avoid visiting the KMC’s offices. “When you organise outreach camps, teach them, especially the elderly, how to make online payments. They should not be coming to the KMC offices,” he said.
“When people visit KMC offices, they often fall prey to touts. If the number of visits to KMC offices can be reduced by completing the work online, there will be no chance of them falling prey to touts,” Hakim later told journalists.
An official of KMC’s assessment department said a few cases of mutation are done online, without any visit to the KMC offices. But the number of people paying their property taxes online has shown a steady and gradual rise, he said. “More than half of the property owners now pay their property tax online,” he said. There are about 9.55 lakh property taxpayers in Calcutta.
In his address to the officials, the mayor stressed the importance of their work in ensuring that civic services were not affected. “Yours is a revenue-earning department. Whether Calcutta’s roads, drainage network, water supply and parks will remain in good condition depends on how much revenue is generated,” he said.
Hakim said the KMC raised over ₹1,200 crore in the last financial year, and the target was to raise ₹2,000 crore in property tax in the next two to three years.