mumbai bjp mla sunil ranes atharva education trust at malad paid its property tax dues of rs 23 crore after bmc threatened to auction its property along with 227 otherson thursday the bmc had published the list of defaulters and the pending dues in two newspapers the name of atharva trust was also mentionedbmc officials claimed that the dues add up to rs 12000 crore which are pending because of court cases and other disputes another rs 1000 crore every year is lost to fraudulent practices corruption and faulty system of calculation and officials are now trying to fix the gaps to avoid getting pulled up during auditsfor instance on a 60storey building in central mumbai the bmc has been charging property tax only up to 25 floors because the occupation certificate oc received is up to that floor and is pending for the floors above the rule says tax must be computed once construction begins and the rate changes once the oc is granted if a building in incomplete the bmc needs to charge the rate fixed for residential purposes for the portion that received oc and commercial rate on the pending portion officials say that in such cases the information fed to the computer is manipulated thereby causing loss to the bmcthe officials came to know about the corrupt practices recently while preparing the list of defaulters and flats under 500 sq ft to grant them exemption in property tax officials stated that many defaulters mainly builders use their political influence and bribe officials to reduce their property tax burden by manipulating the rule when something is mentioned in the rule which is approved by the standing committee and the corporation then the tax should be calculated according to that there should be no scope of use of discretionary power to reduce such taxes by changing the method which happened in the past in many cases and increases scope of corruption an official saidthe bmc charges educational institutions as per the rates decided for commercial establishment unless it is clarified that underprivileged children are also provided education the charges are then based on tax fixed for residential buildingssunil rane demanded that the bmc should devise a proper system after consulting experts how many properties the bmc had auctioned in the last few years to recover the pending dues instead of threatening people the bmc should correct their rules he said sangeeta hasnale assistant municipal commissioner assessment and collection said our intention in not to harass anyone but to ensure that people should pay their dues on time for public work in the past we have noticed that whenever we issued auction notices people either pay up or approach court against auction