If officials are to be believed, neither bills nor any notices were ever issued to the traders for payment of trade licence and rent for over a decade now, indicating that the civic babus had taken the revenue recovery system for granted. “After receiving the hefty bills despatched by the civic body, some of the trade license holders rushed to the Municipality seeking to know the rationale for raising the bills when the business was capped long ago,” informed an official, adding “this only goes to show that bills were not raised by the civic body for years now.”
That the recovery exercise has begun showing results was evident by the fact that citizens as well as the traders have begun tax payments. Records show that the civic body was richer by Rs 12 lakh from payments received on the trade license and rent head during the last eight days, a record of sorts for a civic body which has been struggling to recover the huge arrears.
That’s not all. The civic body received revenue amounting to Rs 8 lakh from the House tax head during the same period. In the meantime, anticipating an anti-encroachment drive, some of the erring traders and vendors in the New Market and Gandhi Market have begun removing the illegal extensions to their existing structures. MMC officials, however, termed the exercise as an eye wash given that some of the unscrupulous traders are yet to remove the angles and fittings used to extend their structures.
