Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) is reeling from a major financial scandal involving embezzlement of property tax worth approximately Rs 14 lakh. Discovered during a routine audit of 2025-26 financial year, discrepancy occurred in Ward 33 under Zone 7. Investigators revealed that property tax had been logged as successfully deposited via Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) in the civic body’s ledger, but an in-depth examination of the bank accounts confirmed that no such funds had actually been credited. This systematic failure allowed fake payment receipts to be issued, leaving taxpayers with proof of payment while the municipal treasury received nothing. Following detection of the massive fraud, Additional Commissioner of Finance Varun Badheria directed Zone 7 Zonal Officer Ankit Jaiswal to initiate formal criminal proceedings. Consequently, a written complaint was lodged at Arera Hills police station seeking a First Information Report against Ward In-charge Raghuvir Tiwari. While police have officially recorded Tiwari’s statement and launched a preliminary investigation, municipal leaders have vowed to pursue strict departmental and legal actions against anyone found complicit in the tax siphoning scheme.

 

Defending himself against the allegations, Ward 33 In-charge Raghuvir Tiwari stated to the police that he had no criminal intent and blamed a lack of computer knowledge for the administrative oversight. Tiwari explained that he was completely unaware of how the tax transactions had been erroneously recorded as electronic RTGS transfers. He further argued that during public Lok Adalat camps, residents frequently make direct payments at the Zonal Office rather than the ward level, which often leads to severe manual data mismatches and unrecorded transactions in the ward-level file systems. Zonal Officer Ankit Jaiswal confirmed that while the initial complaint was registered, subsequent reports suggested that some disputed accounts have recently been reconciled and missing funds deposited. However, municipal insiders point out that this is not an isolated incident. Over the years, multiple wards under BMC have witnessed similar tax collection frauds, where funds collected in cash at ward level were never deposited into the online treasury. Complaints were even registered against regularized staff members, such as LN Singh, for running unauthorized tax collection rackets across various municipal wards.