HUBBALLI: Lok Sabha election has taken a toll on tax collection by the Hubballi-Dharwad Municipal Corporation . With just two more days left for the financial year 2018-19 to end, the cash-strapped HDMC has failed to meet its collection target.Since the announcement of Lok Sabha elections , officials and staff of HDMC have hardly concentrated on collection of tax. In property tax segment, HDMC has achieved only 83% of the targeted revenue. The target was Rs 64 crore but the corporation has collected only Rs 53 crore so far.In the advertisement section, the revenue department of the HDMC has fared badly. The target for the financial year was to collect Rs 2.21 crore but it managed to mop up only Rs 1.11 crore. The target for collection of stallage fee was Rs 5.74 crore but only Rs 3.52 crore has been raised.The officials blame Lok Sabha election for the poor collection of tax. One of the senior officers told TOI that they hardly did any office related work after the announcement of the election. “We are busy attending election related meetings and activities. We are not getting time to concentrate on our work,” he said.Veeranna Savadi, a BJP corporator, blamed HDMC revenue officials for not achieving the target. “Elections were announced recently, but what were the officials doing till then? If they were serious about revenue collection from the beginning of the financial year, they would have accomplished the target by now. Officials are just passing the buck,” he said.TOI tried to contact HDMC commissioner C W Shakeel Ahmed for his view on poor collection of revenue, but he was also busy in an election related meeting and did not respond to phone calls. He continuously attended meetings on Wednesday and Thursday.

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