Indore civic body seeks octroi booty

Indore has made a formal pitch seeking a special corpus of funds under Commercial Capital Project (CCP) along the lines of funds allotted to Bhopal under the Capital Project Administration.

Indore mayor Uma Shashi Sharma and Indore Municipal Corporation commissioner P Narhari have also made a strong case to allow civic bodies to impose octroi duty saying traditional revenue generation sources have been "saturated".

While a formal proposal regarding the CCP was submitted to Madhya Pradesh chief secretary Vijay Singh during his visit to the city, the octroi issue is to be taken up at a meeting between government officials and city representatives to be held in Bhopal shortly.

For Indore to turn into a commercial centre, the city needs more funds than it gets at the moment, Sharma said.

Sharma has proposed that a special fund be set up under commercial capital project in the state budget to boost infrastructure in the city, thereby luring a greater number of private investors.

Insufficient infrastructure, Sharma said, was resulting in Indore losing out to places that did not possess even half the advantages offered by it. Pointing out that revenue gathering had peaked, the duo declared that further tweaking of collection procedures would result in additional income of barely Rs 4-5 crore, insufficient for the corporation's purposes.

"Imposition of octroi is inevitable for sustaining civic development," said Narhari, when asked about the proposal. "It would raise Rs 200-300 crore annually and help us carry out developmental tasks that a scarcity of funds make inconceivable at the moment," he said.

Narhari cited the example of cities in Gujarat and Maharashtra as well as the townships of Ghaziabad and Noida as prime examples of the upward civic curve that could be brought about through imposition of octroi.