Mayor Dayashankar Tiwari directed cancellation of the notification issued by the administration.
Earlier this year, NMC had doubled the development charges in the city with retrospective effect from July 2016. Development charges for residential constructions have gone up from 2% to 4% of the total cost of land and construction, while they were 8% instead of earlier 4% for commercial constructions.
“The decision has hit hundreds of builders and thousands of individual house owners, who paid development charges on or after June 30, 2016. For major projects, the additional charge has run into lakhs,” ruling party leader and BJP corporator Avinash Thakre said in the meeting while submitting an adjournment motion and demanded to reject the administration’s move to levy the doubled development charges.
The state government approved NMC’s proposal on November 3, 2020, and the civic body issued a public notice in newspapers on January 13, 2021.
NMC had doubled the charges to raise money for its contribution towards Nagpur Metro project, which is 5% (or Rs434 crore). Against its share, the NMC had provided 9 pieces of land to MahaMetro, which comes to around Rs73 crore, while for the remaining contribution, it needed funds.
As NMC was unable to pay its share, the officials decided to double development charges. The extra 100% development charge will be known as ‘city transport fund’ and will be provided to MahaMetro, said municipal commissioner Radhakrishnan B. He also pointed out that being a partner, NMC will have to bear profit and loss on operation of MahaMetro.
He informed the House that while allowing NMC to double development charges, the state government had offered four other options to pay its contribution to MahaMetro and they included transfer of development rights, public private partnership, advertisements and funds generated through stamp duty. To this, Thakre pointed out that the NMC is yet to receive stamp duty of Rs268 crore from the state government and it should be adjusted towards NMC’s contribution.
Similar charges were revised in Mumbai and Thane by respective municipal corporations and nowhere permissions of the general body was sought, the civic administration informed the House while justifying its stand.
Former mayor and MLC Pravin Datke pointed out that NMC is paying excess money to MahaMetro. “Instead, we should recover money from them for using our properties to construct pillars,” he said.
To this, Radhakrishnan informed the House that NMC has already demanded Rs1,000 crore from MahaMetro for constructing its pillars (right of way) in road medians and other places in corporation limits. “However, the latter has rejected our demand claiming no such charges were recovered from Metro rails anywhere in the country,” the commissioner said.
Other decisions
GB directed the administration to send a proposal to state government to consider naming the exhibition hall coming up at Ambazari garden area after Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar
Mayor directed the administration to utilize artificial intelligence services to monitor two garbage lifting companies
Order has been issued to appoint competent officers to monitor GPS-enabled vehicles of both the firms
Directive has been issued to release funds for development works by following the budget of the standing committee chairman
Nod for additional funds and constructions of elevated storage reservoirs
Mayor directed the administration to approach state government to extend land lease for setting up long-pending demand of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar memorial near Yeshwant stadium