No more free lunches in Capital

Ever since Gandhinagar came into being in 1969,expenditure on civic amenities was borne by the Urban Development,Roads and Building Department,with the residents only paying for water and sewage charges. The town’s population was 1.95 lakh as per the 2001 census,but it has reportedly increased to about 2.5 lakh since then.

But according to Urban Development Minister Nitin Patel,there will be no more free services in the Capital. He told The Indian Express today that all taxes on property will now be levied as in other municipal corporations. Even government buildings will not be spared,he said.

The minister said a municipal commissioner is likely to be appointed soon along with other staff to render the new municipal body functional. He also said that the Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation would function like other bodies of its kind where three representatives are elected from each ward.

Asked when the elections for the new body would be held,Patel said it was the job of the Election department and that it may take some time. On being questioned about the delay in according municipal corporation status to the city civic body,he said the government had to follow certain procedures.

Notwithstanding the impending taxes,the Gandhinagar residents are happy that their city finally has a municipal corporation. “The formation of a municipal corporation would ensure development of the town. We are ready to pay the taxes,” said Amrutbhai Modh,vice-president of the Gandhinagar Shaher Nagarik Jagrut Samiti (GSNJS),which had been making this demand for long and had won the case in the Gujarat High Court.

“Except the main roads linked with the secretariat complex,rest of the town is totally stinking with no arrangement for garbage disposal,” reacted Modh. “There are 11,000 hutments in the town,but without any public toilets,the dwellers answer nature’s call in the open,” said Modh.

Besides,whenever anyone went to lodge a complaint about any problem,there was no proper response because there was no particular authority responsible for it,he said.

Retired IAS officer Premshankar Bhatt said that with the setting up of a municipal corporation,civic problems would be solved and the town would grow faster because it could benefit from the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) schemes like other municipal corporations. Bhatt was the moving spirit behind the setting up of GSNJS and making the demand for the municipal corporation for the Capital.

He said Gandhinagar being a ‘C’ category city,it can get 80 per cent of the cost for development projects under JNNURM against 35 per cent for Ahmedabad and 50 per cent for Vadodara and other cities.

Regarding the impending taxes,Bhatt said the state government had earlier set up the Makad Committee,which had proposed that the state government should give full financial grant to the new municipal body for a few years till it developed its own sources of income.

But there would be no financial problem for the new civic body because most of the properties in the town are government-owned and it would not be a problem to collect taxes from them,he said.