South Delhi corporation offers tax sops to cleaning staff, kin of martyrs

Presenting budget estimates for the fiscal 2019-20, SDMC standing committee chairperson Shikha Rai proposed to waive house tax on one residential property of its regular sanitation employees and of the families of army and the paramilitary personnel who died on duty

Ahead of the general elections, the BJP-ruled South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) on Thursday announced sops to woo sanitation employees and families of army and paramilitary personnel killed on duty.

There are 14,000 regular sanitation employees in SDMC. (Sanchit Khanna/ HT File)

Presenting budget estimates for the fiscal 2019-20, SDMC standing committee chairperson Shikha Rai proposed to waive house tax on one residential property of its regular sanitation employees and of the families of army and the paramilitary personnel who died on duty.

“Sanitation employees play a pivotal role in keeping our neighbourhoods clean and their contribution cannot be forgotten in improving the image of the corporation, so I announced to waive tax on their one residential property,” she said.

There are 14,000 regular sanitation employees in SDMC.

“The exact number of families of martyrs from the army and the paramilitary forces under SDMC jurisdiction is yet to be ascertained but it is likely to be around 2,000. These moves are expected to put a burden of around ₹3 crore or ₹4 crore on the SDMC, which is not much,” a south Delhi civic body official said.

The SDMC has pegged property tax collection for the financial year 2019-20 at ₹850 crore while the property transfer fee collection target is ₹700 crore for the same fiscal.

Rai also scrapped the provision of increasing the property tax and reduction in concessions, which were proposed by the SDMC commissioner Puneet Goel in his budget presentation last month.

“Hiking the property taxes cannot be the only solution to increase revenue. There are other ways like bringing more people under the tax net of the SDMC. We are eyeing additional revenue of ₹5.5 crore by putting up advertisement space in 11 markets under new policy,” Rai said.

Other moves which were announced in the budget include increasing monthly pension from ₹1,000 to ₹2,000 and budget for moral education in primary schools hiked from ₹10 lakh to ₹25 lakh.

The SDMC’s revised budget estimate for the financial year 2019-20 stands at ₹4,872 crore. The SDMC has allocated major chunk of its budget (25.47%) for sanitation, 18.15% for education, 16.03% for engineering, 15.12% for general administration, 7.19% for public health, among others.

Rai also announced that ₹2.08 crore has been proposed for installation of CCTV cameras in respective wards on the recommendation of concerned councillors. The SDMC also increased the budget of press and information department from ₹5 crore to ₹7 crore.