Stir for Samaikyandhra: Exchequer suffers revenue loss in Vizag

By SNV Sudhir

Visakhapatnam, Aug 28, 2013 : As the total work strike by the government staff, across all the departments, entered day 16, the State’s exchequer suffered the worst ever revenue loss in the recent times.

Around 23,000 government staff, both in urban and rural limits, in the district, began their total work strike from Aug 13 protesting UPA and Congress’s decision to bifurcate Andhra Pradesh to carve out Telangana.

Most of the government offices are welcomed with locked doors these days. Staff from around 73 departments, are taking part in the strike. These departments include, Zilla Prishad, Panchayat Raj, Irrigation, revenue, medical and health, commercial taxes, civic bodies, road transport, stamps and registrations.

The revenue loss is estimated to be more than Rs 50 crs for 15 days. Work at the 19 sub registrar offices coming under stamps and registrations department came to a grinding halt. The stamps and registration department is one of the highest revenue earning arms of the district administration. 

There were no registrations of the lands done at these offices. No stamp duty is being collected. Around more than 2,500 applications for encumbrance certificates and other queries are pending at these offices across the district. It is estimated that around Rs 20 cr worth stamp duty payments came to a halt. “On an average stamps and registration department earns about Rs 45 cr to Rs 50 cr. And at present not even a single staff member is present at any office pushing the loss,” said a senior official of the stamps and registration department.

Collection of road tax, new vehicle registrations, vehicle checks, inspections and other receipts, were stalled due to the shortage of staff at the road transport department. The estimated loss to the road transport authority is put at around Rs 10 cr in these 15 days.

For RTC, since 15 days around 5,100 staff was on warpath and all the 1,063 buses in the district were off roads. RTC suffered around Rs 10 crs since 15 days in the district. Though the online payments and other works had saved the commercial taxes department from facing huge losses due to the work strike, the department is not in a position to conduct surprise checks and crackdown on the illegal transportation of the goods due to the same reason of shortage of staff.

Commercial taxes department generally earns a revenue of Rs 50 lakhs per month through these surprise checks which is on an average it earns Rs 1.5 lakh in a day. Until now the department is said to have suffered loss of more than Rs 20 lakhs for the last 15 days.

Collection of property tax, vacant land tax, approval of building plans and other services took to a beating. GVMC was losing around Rs 80 lakhs to Rs 1.5 cr per day, which amounts to Rs 20 cr since 15 days.