After uploading property tax bills on its website on December 26 and rescinding them after the news of an unannounced tax hike was reported, the BMC is yet to issue bills, a fortnight later. This has resulted in a delay in recovery of taxes. Typically, the corporation begins issuing property tax bills in April—the first month of the financial year—and initiates action against defaulters in January. But in 2023, the BMC delayed the issuance of bills by nearly eight months.

When citizens objected to the hiked figures in the bills uploaded in December, the BMC withdrew the bills, stating that it would issue them again with corrected figures matching those in 2022. “The BMC immediately withdrew the bills once the news about the property tax hike was published. But it still hasn’t uploaded the ‘corrected’ bills,” said Asif Zakaria, a former corporator who raised the issue of the pending bills last month.