House tax imposed on 1.5 lakh additional buildings in Prayagraj from this year

Five years after several areas of the district were brought within city limits following the delimitation process, around 1.5 lakh additional buildings will now start paying house tax to the Prayagraj Municipal Corporation (PMC) based on their sizes. Owners of these properties will also be liable to pay water tax to the PMC from this financial year as per set norms.

The city had as many as 2.36 lakh buildings before the delimitation.

After the delimitation, the number of wards in Prayagraj city had increased from 80 to 100 with the new 20 wards created in urban areas of Naini, Jhunsi, Phaphamau and Jhalwa etc. Nine of these are in Allahabad parliamentary constituency while 11 are in Phulpur parliamentary constituency. After the new delimitation, eight old wards of the city had also ceased to exist. The localities of the wards that had ceased to exist have been merged with the adjoining wards.

In the delimitation process, 207 villages of the district became a part of the city limits which had led to the Prayagraj city limits getting increased from 62.64 sq km to 292.09 sq km.

Confirming the move, PMC’s chief tax assessment officer PK Dwivedi said that the survey of all the buildings in the newly included area of the city has been completed. House tax bills of the house owners will be issued in the current financial year. The house owners of the expanded area will also be given the facility of deciding and submitting self-tax, he shared.

Along with the notification of urban expansion, it was also mentioned that after five years, house tax will be recovered from all the houses in the newly included urban area. It was also said that if basic facilities are available in any part of the expanded area, then house tax and water bill can be recovered from the houses there even before the completion of the five-year period.

Under the same order, the PMC and Jalkal department started collecting house tax from the buildings of the housing schemes of Naini, Jhunsi and Jhalwa and many parts of Phaphamau from the last financial year itself, while the houses and building owners of the remaining areas would have to pay the same from this financial year, said PMC officials.

Officials said that house tax bills were sent to around 25,000 house owners in the extended or newly included areas of the city in the financial year 2024-25. Most of these houses of Prayagraj Development Authority, Housing Development and private sector housing schemes were brought under the purview of house tax. Out of these, around 10,000 house owners deposited the house tax bill for the financial year 2024-25.