Patna, Jan. 12: After the public, the civic body has set its sights on the government bodies to jack up its revenue. It has decided to act tough against the state-run organisations evading holding tax for years.

Taking the lead, the Patna City circle of Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) has started serving notices to the government departments not paying the holding tax. Vishwa Mohan Prasad, the revenue officer of the Patna City circle, said taxes were due against most of the 50 government buildings in his jurisdiction.

“We have sent demand notice to the health, agriculture, education, social welfare and revenue departments to pay the taxes. These departments have several offices in the Patna City circle but have not been paying taxes for long,” he said.

According to the data provided by the officials, Guru Gobind Singh Hospital tops the chart of defaulters in the circle with outstanding dues over Rs 14 lakh.

“LHV School owes Rs 2.25 lakh to the PMC. Rajkiya Swasthya Bhandar has to pay Rs 2.25 lakh, while Krishi Utpadan Bhandar owes Rs 9.75 lakh. We are doing everything to ensure they clear the dues at the earliest,” said Narendra Nath, the executive officer of Patna City circle.

A similar drive against the government bodies has been started in the New Capital circle. Bihar State Electricity Board (BSEB) is the biggest defaulter in this zone.

Sheshank Shekhar Sinha, the executive officer of the circle, said: “The BSEB owes us more than Rs 200 crore holding tax against its buildings. A notice has been sent from urban development department to the BSEB. The step should yield some results.”

According to sources, the BSEB has not been paying holding tax to the corporation from 1970. “The buildings of the board include its headquarters on Bailey Road, residential buildings in BESB Colony and BESB guest houses. The board has not been paying taxes for the past 31 years,” said a source.

Sinha said: “Besides the BSEB, the other government departments have to pay us Rs 3 crore. As their payment is budget-linked, I hope we will be able to collect the dues by the end of this financial year,” said Sinha.

The officials of the other two circles of the PMC — Kankerbagh and Bankipore — are doing the homework before launching the drive against the government organisations, sources said.

The PMC has of late initiated several steps to increase its revenue collection. About a month ago, senior corporation officials chalked out a new strategy to increase its revenue collection. Sanitation workers, along with carts full of garbage, started accompanying the tax collectors to the shops and buildings of holding tax defaulters.

The sanitation workers request the defaulters to pay the taxes, saying that civic services like garbage collection cannot be sustained if people do not pay their taxes on time. The move has started making an impact on the defaulters. Several of them are making on the spot payment.

The PMC officials said the daily holding tax collection of PMC increased from Rs 3.5 lakh to around Rs 12 lakh in the past one month.

The officials of Patna City circle claimed that their revenue collection target this fiscal was Rs 5.7 crore. Of it, Rs 3.41 crore has been collected by January 11 this year.