DCB relaxes octroi terms again

According to Cantt officials,new set of terms and conditions were formulated as the earlier bids failed to generate any response. Officials said the minimum reserve price for the first bid was Rs 25 lakh against which the cantonment board did not receive any response.

Two months ago,the Board had reduced the minimum reserve price to Rs 22.5 lakh and many applications were sold but later nobody participated in the bidding process.

Mahajani said it was owing to this that the terms and conditions have been revised. He said the requirement to procure a solvency certificate has been revised and instead of the private agency submitting the solvency certificate of Rs 20 crore it has to submit a certificate of Rs 10 crore only. The private agency concerned will have to procure the solvency certificate from a nationalised bank which will provide the guarantee that it will pay the loan amount in case of default by the private agency and the subsequent loss to the Cantonment Board. “The relaxations have been brought in as we want to privatise the collection of octroi so that staff employed in the collection of the tax are employed for some other work,” said a cantonment official.

Annually,the Cantonment Board collects Rs 16 crore and foots an expenditure of Rs 2 crore on the expenses of staff employed to collect the taxes. Mahajani said the Board meeting on January 31 will discuss and approve only the octroi relaxation proposal and there is no other agenda for the meeting.