New Delhi: The cash-strapped Municipal Corporation of Delhi is likely to finalise an agency within a month to identify tax defaulters and recover pending dues. Officials said the technical bid for the project had been invited. Once financial bids are cleared, the selected agency will be allotted the task. It will have one year to submit its report after conducting door-to-door surveys, geo-tagging properties, serving tax notices and compiling self-assessment data through a computerised system across the city. As an incentive, it will receive a share of the recoveries.A database will be developed covering commercial and residential properties, office spaces and vacant land. “The agency will train the agents working on the ground to use gadgets for geo-tagging and data entry,” said an official. They will record property details through an app and the MCD circle in-charges will generate tax demand notices after verifying the details with the available data. The agency will serve notices and, in case of non-payment, MCD will begin recovery proceedings. For locked properties, visits may be scheduled on weekends or holidays with notices pasted earlier.The payment to the agency will be made through an escrow account only after taxpayers have cleared the dues. The erstwhile north and south corporations had tried to widen the taxpayers’ base by hiring an agency for door-to-door inspections. The move, however, faced resistance from residents.Meanwhile, in the current financial year, 11,91,779 people have paid property tax till mid-Sept, up from 9,79,675 last year. This includes 10,917 first-time taxpayers, who contributed Rs 331.4 crore. Till Sept 15, MCD collected Rs 2,065.1 crore, a 20.8% increase against Rs 1,708.6 crore collected during the same period in 2024-25.
