THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The progress in the revenue recovery to be undertaken by the district collectors from the defaulters has been further slowed down in the ongoing financial year when compared to the last year. The revenue recovery that was just 34% in 2020-21, has further slowed down to 12% till October last year.
As per the latest data accessed by TOI, as much as Rs 5,959.68 crore is due to be added to the public exchequer through revenue recovery alone in the state. Of this, Rs 3,760.55 crore is stuck in various stay orders by the court as well as by the government. Of the remaining Rs 1,830.22 crore that is immediately available for recovery, only Rs 231.76 crore has been recovered till November 1 last year. The revenue dues to the government include dues under sales tax, agriculture income tax, excise tax, motor vehicle tax and forest dues.
Except Kottayam, Kollam, Alappuzha and Idukki, the remaining 10 districts are yet to recover more than 80% of the dues through revenue recovery. The districts in the descending order of the dues pending for recovery include Wayanad (93.98% of the amount pending for recovery), Malappuram (93%), Kasaragod (92.95%), Palakkad (92.20%), Kannur (91.22%), Thiruvananthapuram (90.95%), Kozhikode (90.80%), Pathanamthitta (88.72%), Thrissur (85.97%) and Ernakulam (84.32%). Even the four districts that have ‘performed well’, have recovered only less than 30% of the lease dues till November 1.
In 2020-21, till March 31, the recovery rate was just 33%, which was mostly owing to stopping all the recovery steps due to the pandemic. Though the situation is better in the ongoing year, revenue department sources said that the department machinery and the district administration are focused more on fire-fighting in the last two years due to the pandemic as well as natural calamities, rather than giving focus to such measures like recovering the revenue dues.
Though the government does not permit granting stay orders on the revenue dues, permission is granted in deserving cases, staying one-time settlement of dues by converting them to equal instalments. The LDF government had in 2017, delegated powers to tahsildars to sanction repayments of revenue dues up to Rs 25,000 through a maximum of 10 instalments. The government had also increased the limits of the district collectors on which they can take a call, to Rs 2 lakh in the case of bank loans and up to Rs 1 lakh in the case of dues to the government.
Also according to the delegated powers, while the finance minister can take decisions on dues up to Rs 10 lakh, the revenue minister can take a call up to Rs 5 lakh. Any defaulters above Rs 10 lakh will have to go to the chief minister for availing clearance for payment in instalments. But despite all such orders, the successive governments have been sanctioning indefinite stay on large defaulters, mostly under political or other kind of influences, that has been another key reason why the revenue dues are mounting.
