Make parking, but pay tax

With the MCD not offering any rebate on property tax to residents who convert their basement or stilts into parking lots, the parking problem in the residential areas is becoming all the more grave.

With the MCD not offering any rebate on property tax to residents who convert their basement or stilts into parking lots, the parking problem in the residential areas is becoming all the more grave.

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Earlier, the civic agency had decided that a 75 per cent rebate on property tax would be given to residents who convert their basement/stilt area into parking lots. A number of residents had decided to make use of the scheme, too, but have backed out now. Defending its decision, the civic body has claimed that such a move would lead to a significant drop in their property tax revenue collection. However, the residents are not happy with the move. “Due to the incentive at least the residents would have come forward and created more parking spaces but now we are back to square one,” said Mohit Verma, a Saket resident. The proposal was made way back in 2009 and was rejected by the civic agency’s standing committee in October.

“We were planning to make use of the scheme but it seems the MCD is not interested in solving the problem. People can earn huge revenue by renting out such areas. Many of us had decided to convert the area into parking space to ease the parking problem but now we won’t be going ahead with it,” says Abhishek Paliawal, a resident of Govindpuri Extension.