The last time the Department of Public Libraries (DPL), which runs 1,131 public libraries in the State, bought books was in 2021 and never again in the last four years.
This has not only rendered these libraries outdated, but has also dealt a major blow to the Kannada publishing industry. 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. Now the outstanding stands at ₹461.04 crore, which will be now divided into five corporations formed in September, 2025. The second big defaulter has been Mysuru with an outstanding of ₹20.49 crore.
