Delhi government may be nowhere near gaining control over MCD but it does help if you hold the purse strings.
The city government has told the civic agency that they will not give Rs 2,000-3,000 crore annual grant to the civic agency unless RWAs are involved in the property tax collection process an idea that was anathema to the civic body till some time back. The government told the Planning Commission about the plan on Wednesday and the response, sources say, has been ``quite positive.''
MCD now collects tax only from a third of the total 25 lakh households in the city. The government has also constituted a task force that, armed with the data of the newly drawn up geospatial infrastructure project, will go on a house to house survey for updating the MCD's own list. MCD officials now say that they are amenable to the idea of getting RWAs to increase tax collections in return for ``incentives'' but it is for the Delhi government which involves itself with RWAs under Bhagidari to evolve the modalities.
Chief secretary Rakesh Mehta, who admitted that the idea had been discussed with MCD quite a few times earlier only to be rejected each time, says that for the government it does not make financial sense to shoulder the burden of MCD's inefficiency. ``They are at present collecting only a third of the tax that they ideally should. If they can collect even another Rs 1,000 crore or so, that would mean so much more money available to us for development. That is why we have said unless they pull up their socks, we will be forced to cut the grant,'' Mehta said.
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with thanks : source : Times of India
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