Maharashtra village adopts shaming plan to recover dues

A SMALL village in north Maharashtra has resorted to naming and shaming defaulters to recover unpaid property and water tax, amounting to Rs 36 lakh.

For the past few months, Deola Nagar panchayat, which hasanannualbudgetofrs6crore, had been urging people to pay dueswithoutanysuccess.sonow it has put up a dozen display boards with names of 100-odd property tax defaulters at major crossroads. After the March 30 deadline, band will be sent to the housesofeachofthewatertaxdefaulters to play songs while their water supply lines will be cut.

“We were recently upgraded to a nagar panchayat and are striving hard to provide urbanlevel amenities. Over the past few years, we have accumulated Rs 36 lakh in unpaid property tax dues and we thought it would make sense to recover this money which could be used for development projects,” said Chandrakant Bhosale (28), Chief Officer of Deola Nagar Panchayat.

Deola village, located 240 km away from Mumbai, is known for its onion trading centre. With a population of roughly 12,000, the gram panchayat was upgraded to a nagar panchayat two years ago.

For now, the naming and shaming strategy has worked with the panchayat recovering nearly64percentofitsdues.once an individual pays their due, his name is crossed out and covered on the board. “We have so far managedtorecovernearly64per cent of our dues. It would be nice to see all the people paying dues because this money will be used for development,” Bhosale said.

Bhosale said that while the strategy had helped in recovering money, it has also antagonised a lot of people. Bhosale said that many have threatened panchayat workers in an effort to strike off their names from the display boards.

However, residents of Deola have supported the move. “We can expect good amenities in our town only when we pay our dues. I support the panchayat’s initiative. There has to be some sort of punishment for people who default on their taxes,” said Sageer Shaikh,atraderandsocialactivist.