PCMC eyes Rs 250 crore in penalty it’s been waiting for

In the last four years, the PCMC had estimated a collection Rs 250 crore in penalty from these 65,000 illegal properties, of which it has just received Rs 8 crore.

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Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation.

With the Bombay High Court on Wednesday rejecting the state government’s plea to regularise illegal structures, owners of as many as 65,000 illegal properties in the jurisdiction of the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) now have no option but to pay the penalty they have been delaying in anticipation of regularisation of these structures.

In the last four years, the PCMC had estimated a collection Rs 250 crore in penalty from these 65,000 illegal properties, of which it has just received Rs 8 crore. Civic officials say Rs 250 crore means lot for the city and its development at a time when revenue sources are drying up.

All these 65,000 illegal properties have been registered after January 4, 2008, said PCMC’s assistant commissioner Bhanudas Gaikwad. “PCMC started imposing penalty tax from 2012. In four years, we have been able to collect just over Rs 8 crore since owners of most of these illegal properties have refused to pay up,” he said.

The penalty tax on illegal structures is slapped as per section 267 (A) of the Maharashtra Mahanagarpalika Act which has replaced the BPMC Act. Section 267 (A) says the penalty tax should be double the property tax. “It means if the annual property tax is Rs 4,000, the owner of property tax will have to pay 12,000. This will include Rs 4,000 as the property tax and Rs 8,000 as the penalty tax,” Gaikwad said.

“The owners insisted only on paying annual property tax, but not the penalty. This happened for three years since 2012. However, in 2015, PCMC decided to collect either property tax or penalty tax. We gave people the option to pay property tax or penalty tax till the state government took a final decision on regularisation. After this, while some paid the property tax, hardly a few paid the penalty tax,” said Gaikwad.

BJP MLA Laxman Jagtap, who had made regularisation of illegal structures his poll plank during the 2014 Assembly elections and promised waiver of the penalty once elected, said he was confident that the state government would regularise illegal structures and had therefore appealed to the people to wait till the government finally decided on the matter. “Collection of penalty tax was the duty of the PCMC. The civic body itself could not collect the tax as the state government had time and again expressed its willingness to regularise the illegal structures. Besides, the civic body itself had given the option of either paying property tax or penalty tax,” he said.

Manoj Dattatrye More

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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