Delhi’s east civic body panel rejects all tax hike proposals by commissioner

EDMC to start projects to upgrade municipal schools to tackle high enrolment, focus on PPP projects, develop waste to art park, technology park for waste handling

The East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) has decided to reject all the tax hike proposals made by the municipal commissioner Vikas Anand. With the upcoming municipal elections due in April this year, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led elected wing has decided that the move to increase tax by 2-3% as well as the introduction of new taxes such as betterment tax and professional tax will be declined.

Bir Singh Panwar, the EDMC standing committee chairman, listed several welfare schemes for the next financial year including a 25% or ₹25,000 subsidy for the installation of composting plants or a waste processing unit by residential bulk waste generators, phasing out of garbage receptacle points by installing 38 fixed compactors (Representational image/HT Archive)

Bir Singh Panwar, the EDMC standing committee chairman, while delivering the budget proposal worth ₹3,970 crore for 2022-23 on Wednesday, stated that the standing committee has disallowed any tax increase proposal moved by the commissioner and the corporation will focus on increasing its internal sources of revenue.

The standing committee is the final decision-making panel for the financial decisions which are taken up by the general body meeting of corporation.

Currently, the financially strained east MCD’s 80% expenditure goes towards paying salaries while 59% of its revenue sources come from the state government in the form of tax allocation and grants. On November 26, 2021, the commissioner proposed a 2-3% hike in property tax for residential properties in east Delhi.

The commissioner also pushed for a hike in ‘theatre tax’ and tax on the sanction of new building plans, addition of 5% education cess, introduction of two new discretionary taxes-- betterment tax and professional tax--in order to improve the financial health of the civic body.

Panwar said when the civic body was constituted a decade ago, the then Delhi government had assured that a financial package will be provided to the disadvantaged corporation to make it financially viable, but no assistance was ever provided.

“If any organisation is forced to start its journey in a financial crisis, the crisis remains perpetual. The Delhi government has always tried to financially cripple the east corporation. The Covid pandemic has made the situation even more challenging as sources of revenue have gone down while burden of additional work has been put on us,” the chairman said.

He added that the rules framed by the Delhi government do not allow the municipal councillors to undertake development work in unauthorised colonies, while there is no such restriction on MPs and MLAs.

“East Delhi has the most backward areas in its jurisdiction as 87% of the region comprises unauthorised areas while only 13% region is planned, which makes it even more difficult for the corporation to deliver services in the most densely populated part of the city,” he added.

Panwar listed several welfare schemes for the next financial year including a 25% or ₹25,000 subsidy for the installation of composting plants or a waste processing unit by residential bulk waste generators, phasing out of garbage receptacle points by installing 38 fixed compactors, 76 mobile waste compactors and 60 material recovery facilities, and the promise of a long-term plan for tackling pollution sources in trans-Yamuna areas.

He added that a technology park is being developed by EDMC in New Jaffrabad ward, and will showcase technologies to tackle floating waste material in Kasturba drain.

Panwar announced that other east Delhi drains including SSBL drain, Gokulpuri drain and Gandhi Nagar drain will be added to the project.

“We will also upgrade the 12MW Ghazipur waste-to-energy plant so that it can be used to its full capacity. A 2,000TPD waste processing integrated facility in Ghonda-Gujran will be completed by December 2022,” he added.

The budget lists several steps to deal with the rise in the number of enrolments in municipal primary schools during the pandemic. EDMC operates 354 primary schools with more than 200,000 students.

“We will add English medium sections and upgrade all the schools to Nigam Pratibha level. Funding for a foreign training scheme has been proposed, under which initially two teachers will be sent to foreign universities in 2022-23. EDMC will also provide a ₹10,000 subsidy to each teacher to buy laptops for online classes. The engineering department will add more classrooms due to increasing enrolments while the process for hiring new nursery teachers is underway,” he added.

Under the remunerative projects cell, the corporation has decided to set up a PPP cell, invite tenders for 37 surface parking sites and levy revenue from EV charging points and cell on wheels.

The cash-strapped corporation has repeated several old projects in the current budget including upgradation of SDN hospital, smart classrooms and PPP-based models to manage municipal parks.

The standing committee has cleared a proposal to set up a waste-to-art park in East Delhi. This will be third such park in the city after the waste-to-wonder and Bharat Darshan parks.

Manoj Tyagi, the leader of the Opposition in EDMC, said the budget proposal made by chairperson was “laughable”.

“If we compare the revenue streams to pre-pandemic years, all their collections are down. In parking sector, property tax, advertisement, the corporation is not able to increase the internal sources due to corruption. They should stop blaming the Delhi government for all of their failures. Sanitation is the basic obligatory function and despite privatisation of waste collection, our Swachh ranking remains one of the poorest in the country,” he added