North body announces tax exemption
The North Corporation’s budget before the upcoming MCD elections in the city focussed on the economically weaker section by providing them relief from paying property tax.
The agency has also kept people aged above 85 out of tax net. To strengthen the security of schoolchildren, it has doubled the insurance cover of 3.5 lakhs students from R 50,000 to R 1 lakh.
While finalising the budget for 2017-18 on Friday, the leader of the house Vijay Prakash Pandey informed that the properties up to 26 square metres will be exempted from property tax.
“Most of these properties belong to people from the economically weaker section and we don’t want them to burden them further. However, the tax rebate won’t be extended to people who have bought two 26 square metres of plots and joined them later under the scheme of MCD,” said Pandey.
Besides the tax rebate, senior citizens will also get a four-storey old-age home in Shalimar Bagh. It would be constructed at the cost of ₹6 crore and will have 72 rooms. All the rickshaw pullers registered with the North Corporation would be insured under Prime Minister Bima Yojna. To avail the scheme, the rickshaw pullers should be above 21 years. The North Delhi Municipal Corporation is also considering to convert 1.92 lakh streetlights and 12,316 semi half mastlights into LED lights. The work will be implemented through private firms. Blaming the Delhi government’s Geo Spatial Delhi Limited for delay in verification of data for the purpose of distributing identity cards to property tax payers, Pandey said that the agency is not taking the job seriously.
“The Congress ruled opposition blamed us for not being able to increase property tax payers in last two year. But this is not our fault. We have already provided data for 3.30 lakh people to the company before issuing Unique Property Identification Code. But out of that only 1.39 people have been verified,” he said.
According to him, survey of 37 wards has been completed and 63,519 properties have been issued UPI Cards and 73,650 are ready for distribution.