Telangana miners ignore royalty one-time settlement scheme

Hyderabad: The one-time settlement scheme (OTS) announced by the Telangana government for those who had evaded mining royalty fee and lease fee has drawn poor response.

Around 1,900 cases were booked by the vigilance and enforcement department against tax evaders in the Telangana region in undivided AP.

In order to resolve these pending cases, the TS government had offered an OTS scheme in December 2014. Even though a year was given to tax evaders, only 350 cases out of 1,900 were resolved and the government got just Rs 10 crore against the Rs 150 crore it expected.

If penalty is levied on tax evaders it will fetch nearly Rs 500 crore to the exchequer. The deadline has already been extended by six months owing to poor response last year.

The fresh deadline will end in February. “Officials were told to inform evaders about OTS. If they fail to utilise the opportunity, we will be forced to issue notices,” said T. Harish Rao, the minister for mines.