Kolkata: If you are a property owner and want to clear your tax dues by a specified date to avail of a rebate, you have to wait for some more time. The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) brass has decided to extend the rebate period till Oct 31 to enable those unable to pay taxes online during the rebate period due to malfunctioning of the KMC server.A technical glitch at the State Data Centre (SDC) continues to disrupt key KMC departments even after a month, affecting thousands of property taxpayers. Worse, scores of flat buyers are unable to get the mutation done as they can’t get a ‘No Outstanding Certificate’ (NOC) from the KMC assessment department due to the server malfunction.Also impacted are parents of newborns as well as those who have lost their near and dear ones recently as downloading of birth and death certificates from the Janma Mrityu Tathya portal is not available, again due to the server issue.Even as disruptions in key services persist for weeks owing to the technical glitch, IT experts who work closely with the state govt have raised concerns that the malfunction could be linked to a possible “malware or ransomware” attack.KMC officials of various departments said portals that are interactive in nature and also have facilities for financial transactions were not functioning properly.“On the Janma Mrityu Tathya portal, after entering the acknowledgement number, often an OTP is not being delivered on the registered mobile number for downloading death certificates. The online facility of paying property tax through the KMC portal is still unavailable,” a senior official said.This apart, the KMC-run Chatbot for applications for birth and death certificates is not properly functioning, making it difficult for the applicants to avail themselves of the essential civic service.A KMC assessment department official on Wednesday expressed concern about the dwindling revenue from the property tax source due to the ongoing server malfunctioning. “Our revenue from property tax has dropped significantly in the past one month due to the server hazard. If the crisis is not resolved, we are going to be the worst affected by the year-end,” said a KMC revenue department official.According to several IT experts who work closely with the state govt, the data recovery centres have also “failed to retrieve a significant portion of the lost data”. They also raised questions about the efficacy of the Security Operation Centre under the West Bengal Cyber Security Centre of Excellence (WB-CSCoE), which has been set up for monitoring, analysing and defending critical IT infrastructure against cyber threats.
