MARGAO, OCT 14
Call it an eyewash or a farce with an eye on vote bank politics, Margao Municipal Council’s controversial move to allot house numbers to illegal structures dotting across the Commercial capital has come a cropper.
For the second time in recent years, drive by overzealous City Fathers to allot house number under the pretext of generating revenue by way of house tax has failed to find favour with the Civic authorities.
More than 3000 illegal households in the Commercial capital were assessed for house tax by engaging manpower – which has cost the Civic body around Rs three lakh. But, the files pertaining to the assessment are gathering dust in the Civic body, with Civic officials reluctant to allot them the house numbers.
“These structures are illegal in nature. Assessment of these houses have not found favour with the authorities”, remarked a Civic official.
The ruling group of Councilors had pressed hard to allot these houses house number, having promised their voters to get the job done during their tenure, but in vain.
Margao Municipal Chief Officer, Prasanna Acharya said he is not aware of these files since he had said no for allotting house numbers for these structures during his earlier stint as Chief Officer.
It is learnt that instead of taking a decision on these files, the Civic body referred the matter to the Director of Municipal Administration for a decision, but the DMA wrote back to the Council seeking to know why the decision has not been taken at the level of the Civic body.
When contacted, MMC Chairperson Savio Coutinho argued that the exercise was carried out in the interest of the Council. “We wanted to bring thousands of these households under the tax net since they were paying no taxes, but were still enjoying all civic amenities like other tax payers. It is for the Civic authorities to take a final call on the matter”, he added.
Notwithstanding the eyebrows raised over the move to bring the illegal houses under the tax net, Coutinho says the exercise would have fetched the Civic body revenue lakhs of rupees by way of house tax. “We had plans to generate the revenue from these houses by collecting arrears of the last 10 years But, the Civic administration dilly dallied on the proposal”, he added.
Incidentally, a similar exercise was undertaken by the previous Council, but the files are confined to the dusty racks in the Civic body. An amount of Rs five lakh was spent on the exercise to engage private individuals, with Civic officials saying the amount has literally gone in the drain.
