Mumbai’s pet dogs cost Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation Rs1 crore

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation may be complaining loud and long about being severely cash-strapped, but it turns out that the civic body has only itself to blame.

According to a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), the BMC has lost Rs1 crore in the last five years because it did not recover the annual ‘tax’ – licence fee – of Rs100 levied on pet dog owners because it had not updated its database on pet owners. The report was made public on Friday.

“By failing to keep data of dog owners, the BMC has suffered recurring loss of revenue of Rs20 lakh per annum. It has not levied tax on approximately 20,000 dogs,” the report stated.

According to the report, the Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act, 1888, provides that a tax not exceeding Rs100 per annum be levied on every dog above the age of six months.

Every person who owns or is in charge of a dog on which tax can be levied is required to submit returns to the BMC and pay the tax due.

The Act requires that BMC maintain a register showing the names and addresses of the person liable to pay tax. But, the BMC did not maintain any records on pet dogs.

“There was no effective monitoring on recovery of tax on dogs, issue of licences and submission of returns by dog owners. As stated by the BMC in June 2009, 4,200 licences were issued during 2007-08 and 7,652 in 2008-09 as against the 27,147 pet dogs in the city as per the animal census conducted by BMC in 2007. The BMC stated that advertisements were issued in newspapers in 2008, which resulted in the increase in number of pet dog licences,” the report stated.

“As BMC has not prescribed any standard procedure to ensure the issue of licences for all per dogs and depends on voluntary approach by the public, future revenue losses cannot be ruled out,” the report remarked.

BMC officials explained that the records could not be updated because there was no proper mechanism.

“Now, we have computerised the collection of data on pets. Since then, the fee collection and registration has increased. At each ward there is a facility to register new pet dogs and pay fees for renewal. There will be no delay in registering the pets as the system has been decentralised,” said a senior official from BMC’s health department.