Bengaluru civic body moots 15-30% increase in property tax
In an effort to raise revenue for a cash-strapped civic body, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMPs) plans a 15 to 30% increase in property tax for both residential and non‐residential units. The Karnataka Municipal Corporation Act of 1976 stipulates that BBMP is to review property tax once every three years, at the meeting of which officials took this legal obligation to a higher authority notice. “The Indian government, with the exception of the KMC Act, mandates the local agency annually to revise property taxes. “The Commissioner suggested that the Land Revenue Act should be integrated into the KMC Act to allow BBMP to connect property and auction it for recovering due taxes. For example, in 2019-20 the collection of property tax was Rs 2,669 crore, while the target was Rs 3,500 crore.
About 50,000 owners defaulted on the payment of taxes. Big companies range from Rs 10 10 to 10 lakh Rs 10 crore is among defaulter’s list. One of the big defaulters is a respectable building firm that manages the city mall in the area.
Can’t go beyond relief already announced: Centre tells SC
The Centre, in response to the demand for assistance from sectors such as real estate, reported that a composite interest for a six-month loan repayment moratorium cannot be applied to the already announced financial relief packages. In the particular sense of the pandemic and insecurity of these particular groups of borrowers, the Government agrees to take on the burdens of composite interest and the categories of borrowers to be assisted. In its statement of October 2, the SC asked the government to take into account the waiver of interest on the payment of instalments to be charged for credit of loans up to Rs 2 for MSMEs and individual lenders during the six-month moratorium from March 1 to August 31. The SC demanded relief from other groups of lending agencies and from different sectors of industry. In response, the Centre announced a Rs 21.7 lakh crore package covering various industries, under the packages Garib Kalyan and Aatma Nirbhar.
After accepting payment, owners can’t challenge land acquisition: Punjab & Haryana HC
The Punjab and Haryana Court ruled that, in an order that would aid public authorities to ensure that such a construction annexation was not disrupted by vexatious litigation, citizens can not pursue legal redress from their land acquisition if they have already taken compensation for it.
In Gurgaon, many years have been delayed in several construction projects, mostly due to litigation concerning the land acquisition. Many landowners had filed a number of petitions challenging the acquisition by HSVP even after obtaining increased compensation.
HC has claimed that Section 101-A empowers state governments, where it becomes unavoidable or non-essential, to declare land acquired for public purposes under the 1894 Land Acquisition Act. “This is the discretionary power vested in the state that can be exercised with regard to the ‘absolute plot of land,’ not just a parcel of land and hence no right of an individual landowner to request that his individual plot of land be de-notified.
The new Land Acquisition Act was passed in 2013, in which the HC petition challenging the purchase pursuant to section 24(2) of the Law was submitted in 2014, which stipulates that land acquisitions are invalid unless compensation is paid for up to five years from acquisitions, or development, and was disposed of in 2015. In 2016, under section 101A of the Act to de-notify their property, a fresh request was submitted to HC.
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