New Delhi: The Delhi unit of the Congress on Friday levelled serious allegations against both the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), accusing them of attempting to divert public funds through corrupt practices in property tax collection, and demanded that an immediate investigation be initiated.
Delhi Congress president Devender Yadav told The Sunday Guardian that the BJP-led Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) is creating conditions for large-scale corruption by outsourcing the collection of property tax to private agencies in exchange for commissions ranging from 5% to 10%. He asserted that this plan is a replica of the “liquor scam model” allegedly employed by AAP, and will provide the BJP with a fresh opportunity to misuse MCD’s financial resources.
“AAP looted the Municipal Corporation of Delhi for more than two years during its tenure, and now the BJP is attempting to establish another corrupt mechanism through privatisation,” Yadav claimed. He highlighted that the MCD has set an ambitious property tax collection target of Rs 4,000 crore for the 2025 financial year — an increase of Rs 1,837 crore over the earlier target — warning that outsourcing could lead to around Rs 184 crore being siphoned off to private operators.
Yadav stated that while Delhi has nearly 40 lakh properties, this year only 13 lakh taxpayers have contributed a total of Rs 2,163 crore. He alleged that the MCD, under the pretext of conducting a property survey, intends to trouble approximately 27 lakh property owners, a move he likened to the corrupt practices seen during the survey of unauthorised colonies, which, according to him, facilitates illegal recovery of Rs 500–Rs 1,000 crore each year.
The Congress leader further expressed opposition to the proposed “Property Tax Settlement Scheme,” which requires property owners to make lump-sum payments for pending dues in order to obtain waivers on interest and penalties. Instead, Yadav urged the BJP to prioritise rooting out corruption, honouring the commitments made in its 2022 Sankalp Patra, and boosting revenue by strengthening MCD’s internal systems rather than by engaging private contractors.
He referred to the 2023 findings of the Fifth Municipal Valuation Committee, which identified widespread corruption — allegedly during AAP’s period in charge of the MCD — as the main reason for the significant gap between property tax targets and actual collections, despite revisions in the base unit area value and other parameters. Yadav also cautioned that BJP-led states such as Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Odisha are implementing similar privatised property tax models, which he characterised as being “engineered for corruption rather than aimed at genuine governance.”
