BENGALURU: The BBMP, which had claimed to rollback the hike in property tax after canceling zonal reclassification, has backed out for two reasons.
One, to get itself out of the loan quagmire it is in, and to stop the opposition BJP from gaining political mileage out of it. The BBMP desperately needs the money from the property tax collection, which is its biggest revenue, while the BJP has been protesting for the rollback.
The BBMP’s financial health is so critical that unless it borrows from financial institutions, it cannot even place the budget.
Senior officials in the Palike felt that the property tax hike could earn BBMP a few hundred crores more. The BBMP had withdrawn zonal reclassification after protests by the public and BJP.
Sources in Congress, however, said that it was in fact the BJP dispensation that proposed zonal reclassification based on guidance value to revise the property tax. But the classification was not scientific which had triggered an outrage.
