City gymkhanas will now pay rent as per land area
The Maharashtra government has revised a lease policy pertaining rents of those lands on which gymkhanas have been run by the private players in island Mumbai, suburb and across the state from the British period.
The move will increase the revenue of the state but also resolve the dispute between the gymkhanas and the state over the lease rents.
The State Cabinet, chaired by the chief minister, on Tuesday has approved the new lease policy. The revised lease policy will be applicable with retrospective effect from January 1, 2017.
The policy has classified the gymkhanas in three categories with varied rent for each.
In 2003, the state government had brought up a revised lease policy for those gymkhanas whose lease duration were going to be ended. But the few lessees of gymkhanas had approached to the High Court against that policy. Following it, the revenue department amended the lease policy and come up with a new policy for the gymkhanas.
According to new lease policy, the classification of gymkhana has been determined on the land areas. The land areas with 20,000 sq meter has been classified in A category. The land areas below 20,000 square metre up to 10,000 square metres have marked in B category and less than 10,000 sq meter has been classified in C category.
Manukumar Srivastava, principal secretary of revenue department, said, "The revised lease policy would applicable with retrospective effect from January 1, 2017 on those gymkhanas whose lease that have been expired."
Srivastava also said that a lease contract of the gymkhanas henceforth would be entered as per the revised lease policy.
An official of revenue department said, "There are ten gymkhanas in Mumbai and their lease had expired since over two years. Without a lease policy, it was difficult to renew the leases of such gymkhanas."
Under the revised policy, the rent would be charged on the 10 percent of Ready Recknor (RR) rates. For A, B and C category, per annum lease rent would be 1 percent, 0.5 percent and 0.25 percent respectively.
Chandrakant Patil, revenue minister said, "The rent is proposed to be increase by 4 percent each year. In earlier government, the rent was charged on 15 percent of RR rates and that was objected by many gymkhanas terming it financially non-viable. As a result they approached the court and the matter was pending for all those years. Now, we have reduced the rates and I am sure the problem would be solved.”
18 gymkhanas had been given lands during the British era on the lease of 99 years or less in Mumbai. Per year revenue from these places to government could not be increased until the lease period ended in 1999, 2000 and 2001.