Friday, January 4, 2013

OCTROI SCAM: BMC crackdown on car owners earns them 20L

There’s bad news for hundreds of thousands of Mumbaikars who have registered their cars outside the city to escape the octroi charges: the civic body officials will cover the entire city to bring the octroi evaders to book, and their deadline is March 31.

Around two weeks ago, the civic body officials visited at least 10 housing societies in south Mumbai and found 35 cars which were registered outside the city, for which octroi was not paid. The drive was part of BMC’s door to door initiative to track cases of octroi evasion by the vehicle owners, and earned them Rs20 lakh in penalties.

Identifying vehicles registered in Mumbai is easy: all such vehicles have registration numbers beginning with MH 01 (Mumbai Central RTO), MH 02 (Andheri) and MH 03 (Wadala-Worli). Those who register their vehicles in Mumbai are required to pay the octroi of 4.5per cent of the vehicle’s cost. Many car owners prefer to register their vehicles in Navi Mumbai, where instead of octroi, just oneper cent cess is levied. For instance, if your car costs Rs 10 lakh and you get it registered in Navi Mumbai, you end up saving Rs 35,000.

However, if you are a resident of Mumbai driving a vehicle registered elsewhere, the civic body can charge 10 times the actual octroi for non-payment of octroi as per Section 192 (1) of the BMC Act. This works out to a penalty of Rs 4.5 lakh for a vehicle costing Rs 10 lakh.

Ramesh Arote, deputy assessor and collector, BMC said the civic body officials found around 100 cars registered outside Mumbai in the south Mumbai drive, but most of them were able to prove their residence/business operations in the areas of registration.

“The drive will continue,” Arote said, “It’s a common ploy by the vehicle owners to save money, but such tactics result in huge losses to BMC.” He added that all vehicle owners in the BMC-controlled areas have been asked to furnish details of their vehicles.

The citizens were not worried. While one of them said it was “impossible” for BMC to launch a door-to-door check, a resident of Andheri added, “I got my car registered on my office address in Airoli. What can BMC do about it?”
Courtesy:
Pandurang.Mhaske@timesgroup.com
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