Bhubaneswar, Dec. 2: Pay your holding tax or find your name as a defaulter on hoardings at various vantage points in the city.

In order to collect holding tax, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation has decided to use a “pressure point” technique by displaying the names of evaders on the civic body’s hoardings at public places. The corporation will also identify the remaining defaulters.

For the past two years, the civic body has been unable to meet its holding tax target. Against a target of Rs 40 crore, it has collected around Rs 22 crore.

Sources said the tax wing would select the names of at least 200 defaulters from 15 tax wards for display on hoardings at various vantage points in the city. This, they believe, will put a psychological pressure on the evaders and make them pay.

Public relations officer Srimanta Mishra said: “We have asked the tax collector to give us names of at least 10 major defaulters from each tax ward, so that we can put these on the hoardings.”

Besides, the standing committee on taxation and finance met in the third week of last month and recommended a survey to find out the major defaulters and those who were cheating the civic body of thousands of rupees every year in terms of holding tax.

Committee chairman Seikh Nizamuddin said: “Many people are using their houses for commercial purpose but paying holding tax at the rate fixed for the residential types. We have recommended that an independent agency should be selected to carry out a survey to enumerate the types of holdings and their owners across the city.”

He said: “Once the council passes our suggestions, the survey would be initiated. We have also recommended publishing names of the defaulters on hoardings as it used to be practised during 2003-04.”

The holding tax target for 2014-15 was Rs 40 crore. But so far, the tax department has collected Rs 7 crore. “We are still awaiting holding tax worth Rs 15.85 crore from 36 government offices in the city. While the public pay 17.5 per cent of the value of their property in a year as holding tax, the government buildings are paying only 7.5 per cent. But still, they are resorting to dilly-dally,” said a civic official.

Sources said the municipal commissioner would write to authorities of various government offices to pay the tax, so that their names would not appear on the hoardings.

Apart from the defaulting house owners, the low collection of holding tax is also linked to some of the inefficient and corrupt tax officials, who wrongly assess the houses either by decreasing the size of the property or showing it as residential while it is being used as commercial.

Mayor Ananta Narayan Jena told The Telegraph: “During the assessment of a hotel building near Kalinga Hospital Square, we have found that a tax collector was wrongly assessing the holding tax. We are going to initiate a vigilance proceeding against the official, so that it would act as a lesson for others to fall in line.”

Another tax official said: “From the next year, we will make it mandatory for each tax collector to emphasise collection during the rebate period in April. The practice intensifies towards the end of the financial year causing a dip in the collection.”

Though the civic body became a corporation in 2003, collection of property tax replacing the holding tax could not be possible as the state government is yet to get the nod from the Assembly. “The holding tax defaulters should be treated sternly, so that the civic body can earn more revenue for its development activities,” said Pokhariput resident Ganeshwar Parida.