NEW DELHI: In order to fund the Smart City plan the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC)
has collected the Rs 380 crore of property tax from the 14,000 properties under its jurisdiction.
This is the highest ever tax collection done by the civic body in a financial year.
“We successfully achieved our target in this fiscal and next year we will aim a higher amount.
The efforts are to increase the resources required by the civic body for the expenditure in Smart City project,” Director Tax M L Sharma said.
The NDMC also has around Rs 1,200 crore worth of revenue generated from the property tax stuck under various litigations in court. Now, in order to get the money out, the civic body has asked the Delhi High court for a single hearing of all the 38 cases of property tax dispute pending since the last three years. “We have requested the court for bunching up of all the cases and hold a single hearing, now it is upon the court to find a solution to this. Most of the cases that are in the property tax dispute involve commercial units such as hotels, complexes. Efforts are also on to take up the issue to the highest level,” Sharma said.
The reason behind the dispute of all the cases, explains Sharma is that the owners of the properties have challenged the by-laws, amended by the NDMC in 2010.
As per the procedure if a property owner wants to challenge the rules of the NDMC, the person has to approach the Additional District Judge, only then the judge will refer the matter to the civic body for a meeting with the department for a solution.
After the meeting, the property owner is bound to respect the decision of the civic body, but in the above mentioned cases the law has been challenged by the owners and, hence, it is being taken up in the Delhi High Court. Few major defaulters are Delhi Golf Club with a Rs 100 crore due, offices of Central Public Works Department which has around Rs 150 crore due and ITDC hotels such as Ashoka, Janpath which has to pay Rs 50 crore, the civic body claims.
The Smart Cities Mission of the Ministry of Urban Development is one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet initiatives.