KOLKATA: The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) is planning to extend the ‘rebate period’ to property taxpayers who have been unable to pay the tax online due to a snag in the KMC server in the past three-four days. Many property owners whose due date was during the snag period have missed the rebate deadline.
On Wednesday, a source in the KMC assessment department said the civic body was considering extension of the rebate deadline by a week. “Thousands of property taxpayers have been unable to pay their taxes online on time due to a glitch in our central server. We have been receiving requests from citizens concerned about their inability to get the rebate. After taking up the matter with the civic brass, we may need to announce an extension in the rebate period by a week,” said a KMC revenue department official.
Though the KMC IT department was able to partially restore the system on Wednesday, citizens were seen queuing up in large numbers at the civic body’s treasury counters to clear the property tax dues. At the civic headquarters, there was a serpentine queue on Wednesday afternoon with taxpayers rushing in from across the city to clear their dues.
Rabin Das, a retired private firm employee who had come from Dum Dum, said he had tried twice on Monday to pay property tax online but every time the server showed an error. “I didn’t take chances and decided to visit the treasury counter at the civic headquarters and queued up behind over a hundred taxpayers. Finally, I could pay the dues manually,” said Das.
Sanchita Ghosh, a homemaker, and a resident of New Alipore was also desperate to clear her dues manually having failed in her attempts to pay online. “The experience that I went through the entire Monday was horrifying. Each time I chose to pay my dues online, the KMC server showed an error. Why don’t the civic body upgrade its server?” asked Ghosh.
According to a KMC assessment department official, the error has been a cause for suspension of several activities that include issuance of mutation certificates, payment of property tax fees, trade licence fees among other activities. “We have been working on an upgrade of our server system and hope to wrap up the work soon,” said a KMC official. The official hoped that normalcy would be restored from Thursday onwards.
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