Senior officials in the civic body said the newly appointed special officer will head the meetings while the commissioner will place the agenda.
Earlier, these businesses were carried out by the mayor along with the commissioner and municipal secretary. With the political unit being dissolved, it will now be taken up by the special officer who has the mayor’s powers. Officials will also deliberate on improving the corporation’s finances.
A senior official said the corporation is working on two things: “One is to ensure that we are able to collect taxes on time from the existing pool; the second is how much of it can be increased. For this, the civic body will press for tax collection from big commercial properties in unauthorised colonies.”
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PremiumPresently, many units in unauthorised colonies and villages do not pay taxes. “If big showrooms and godowns (in these areas) are making money from the property, then they should also pay tax,” said the official.
“Houses (in unauthorised colonies) too should pay tax but imposing it all of a sudden will create panic… so we will first make them aware that we are providing sanitation facilities and more facilities would be ensured for them before we ask them to pay tax,” he said.
The erstwhile East corporation has around 2,28,000 taxpayers among 4,00,000 property owners; North MCD has 3,35,000 taxpayers among 1 million property owners; and the South body has 4,75,000 taxpayers among its 1.1 million property owners, according to data released by the MCDs before the last civic body elections in 2017.
The unified MCD formally came into existence earlier this month with IAS officers Ashwani Kumar and Gyanesh Bharti assuming charge as the new civic body’s special officer and commissioner, respectively. The MCD was trifurcated in 2012 during Congress leader Sheila Dikshit’s tenure as chief minister. It has now been reunified by merging the three civic bodies.
