Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon budget unaffected / TOI 11Jul12

Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon budget 'unaffected'
Joel Joseph, TNN | Jul 11, 2012, 04.05AM IST

GURGAON: The Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon claims that the Supreme Court's order regarding collection of property tax from private developers' area will not have a significant impact on the revenue generated from house tax.

With the current fiscal budget, the corporation hopes to earn Rs 500 crore through this tax. Senior officers claim that those coming forward to pay the tax are "sufficient". They also pointed out that real estate player, DLF paid them Rs 12 crore property tax on behalf of their tenants a few days ago.

"The Supreme Court order cannot be interpreted as no property tax for residents of private colonies. Many residents are deliberately trying to interpret the court order as that these residents are not supposed to pay property tax to the MCG, till further court orders'" said a senior MCG official.

The court has only stated that we cannot force or strong measures to recover this tax from them," the official said.

"We are preparing our affidavit which we need to file before the court, in two weeks' time. In that we will inform the court that we are collecting property tax from the private colony residents according to the provisions in the municipal act. We will state before the court the process adopted to calculate the tax and the survey we have conducted. We will let the court know of the difference between the present and the earlier tax formula," he added.

The number of people in the privately developed colonies, who are willing to pay the tax have been increasing. "DLF will pay more in a few days," he said.

Many residents' welfare associations (RWA) and those living in the privately developed colonies have been protesting against the MCG's direction to pay the yearly property tax, even though the civic agency is currently not providing any service to them.

Some residents are determined to continue their fight against the MCG, till such time that they take over their colonies from the private builder mafia and start providing basic services like water, sewerage, streetlights and roads. "We will not allow them to fleece us like this and we hope that the court, in its next hearing, will refund the tax that the MCG has already collected from people living in private colonies," said Rajat Sharma, resident of DLF Phase III.

Copyright © 2012 Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. All rights reserved. For reprint rights: Times Syndication Service


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