Acharya Atre auditorium is one of the five such facilities run by the civic body. (Express File Photo)
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THE Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) is rethinking its decision to increase the rent of five of its auditoriums by up to five times, after drawing flak from social, voluntary and cultural organisations.
The rent, which was revised after 17 years, came into effect on July 1 but is likely to be scaled down following the protests from different quarters.
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The PCMC runs five auditoriums — Professor Ramkrishna More auditorium in Chinchwad; Acharya Atre auditorium in Sant Tukaram Nagar; Ankushrao Landge auditorium in Bhosari; Nilu Phule auditorium in New Sangvi and G Di Madgulkar auditorium in Pradhikaran.
Besides plays, the auditoriums are available for public and political events, award functions, school and college gatherings and are also rented out to private firms for organising events.
Different rates were charged for the auditoriums, depending on the number of hours it
is rented out for.
For instance, school events or functions by private organisations are charged Rs 9,558 for renting the auditorium for five hours. If a function is held for eight years, the rent was doubled.
The rent has now gone up four to five times.
For instance, private schools will now be charged Rs 47, 200 for renting the auditorium for three hours, up from Rs 9,558 for a span of five hours that was charged before July 1. Other organisations would be charged Rs 59,400.
If a school is using the auditorium for eight hours, they would be charged Rs 18,978.
If a private firm takes the auditorium on rent for eight hours, they would be charged Rs 19,800, said civic officials in the know of the matter.
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The move to revise the rent has not gone down well with social, voluntary and cultural
organisations.
Even political leaders have expressed their anger against the move. MP Shrirang Barne has taken up the issue with the state government.
BJP leader Amit Gorkhe, who heads the Kalarang Sanstha, has approached state cultural minister and NCP leader Bhausaheb Bhoir, who has forwarded the complaint to Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar.
Bhoir said, “The rate revision has been done after 17 years but it is on the higher side. The civic body should take efforts to encourage social and cultural activities. The hike in rates would prove to be a dampener to organisations, who work on a meagre budget.”
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Gorkhe said, “The role of the civic body is to support the civil society and not work against it. The decision to hike rent by such huge margins has come as a big setback for social, voluntary and cultural organisations. These organisations do not work for publicity. They work to harness talent among youngsters and uphold our culture.”
When asked about the reason for the hike, deputy municipal commissioner Manoj Lonkar said, “We are hardly getting any revenue from the auditoriums. We are actually incurring losses for maintaining the auditoriums. We do not want to make profits but at least the auditoriums should be self-sustaining.” Even otherwise, Lonkar said, for cultural activities like staging plays, the increase is minimal.
“The four to five times hike is primarily for events by private companies and schools,” he said.
Following protests from different quarters, the civic administration said it would be revising and scaling down the rent.
“We have held meetings with representatives of different organisations. We will soon be revising the rent so that it is acceptable to everyone,” according to Lonkar.
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
