Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief spokesperson Saurabh Bhardwaj on Monday  accused the leaders of BJP-ruled North Corporation of being involved in  "massive" manipulation of the rented and commercial properties as the civic body does not maintain any account related to property tax despite the direction issued by the apex court in 2002.

“The property tax collection is the key way of revenue for the municipal corporations across the country. According to a data this year the North MCD was supposed to receive RS 2838 crore from the property tax but the MCD has collected only Rs 1703 crore. The biggest betrayal by the BJP ruled North MCD is that they do not maintain any proper documentation regarding the collection of property tax. There is no way to find out how much corruption or financial disputes they have.

"In 2017 before the MCD election the BJP claimed that they will replace all the sitting councillors because there were various corruption charges against them. After the election, the BJP won in all the three municipal corporations of Delhi but the corruption did not go away and flourished in a massive way,” he said.

Bhardwaj said, "The local MCD officials decide about the property tax collection from an individual establishment. They can change the usage of the property which means if a property is rented then they can show that it is not rented. If the property is vacant then they can show that it is being used for commercial purposes. Moreover, very significantly there is no report or documentation of the fact regarding the property tax exemption.”

 In 2002 when this law was passed then the BJP ruled MCD decided to conduct a survey of all these properties but this nothing happened, he said.

"The audit report noted that the survey was never conducted after the implementation of the unit area method of the property tax nor were the property tax returns scrutinised hundred per cent. In absence of survey and non-scrutinised PTRs, loss of revenue on account of property tax cannot be assessed. They have never maintained any kind of assessment books,” he added.

“The municipal Corporation has given unique property identification number two 11,47,000 properties. But the BJP ruled MCD has never maintained any kind of record of these properties to just do corruption. According to a report several instances of corruption and financial discrepancies happened in the name of property tax,” he said.

Citing an example, the AAP leader said “At Shalimar Bagh, there is Agarwal auto mall which has two parking floors. Within 2009-2010, they paid property tax. But after that, they never paid any property tax claiming that the parking was not taking place. After around seven years when the survey took place, it was found that the BJP ruled MCD has suffered from loss of more than Rs.90 lakh."