Govt hasn’t procured books for libraries for four years now, local bodies owe department ₹526.83 crore collected as library cess

Key Highlights

• The crux of the problem lies in how the local bodies, which collect a Library Cess as part of the property tax, do not regularly transfer them to the DPL.
• This has been an issue for decades now and at the end of the 2024-25 financial year, DPL has an outstanding of a whopping ₹526.83 crore.
• As on March 31, 2025, the local bodies were supposed to transfer ₹827.42 crore in library cess, which includes cess collected in 2024-25 and the backlog from previous years.
• However, only ₹300.59 crore has been transferred till date, leaving an outstanding of ₹526.83 crore.
• The biggest defaulter has been the erstwhile Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), which had a total outstanding of ₹691.85 crore, of which it paid only ₹230.81 crore.