SDMC decides against hiking property tax for industries

The South Delhi Municipal Corporation has decided not to hike property tax rates for industries.
The decision by SDMC came days after North and East Delhi municipalties took a similar decision.
Tabling the proposal in today's Standing Committee meeting, BJP leader Subhash Arya said the corporation will levy rates of the previous financial year.
The commissioners of three municipal corporations had decided to double the property tax rates of all non-residential properties including industries.
Meanwhile, in a separate development, leader of the opposition Farhad Suri termed the report detailing progress on desilting of drains as a "fraud" and called upon the Standing Committee Chairman Rajesh Gehlot to look into the matter.

"If we see the figures for North Zone, it says the total target of silt to be removed is 13746 MT. It adds that desilting has been completed in 24 drains and that work on 27 others is in progress. However, the total amount of silt already removed stands at 12905 MT," he said.

"Does this mean that in the remaining 27 drains, barely a thousand metric tonne of silt remain? This is a misleading figure with similar data having been provided for all the four zones," Suri added.
Gehlot admitted the corporation does not have enough workers to clean all the drains under its jurisdiction.

"The number of workers is just not enough," he said and directed officials to issue short term tenders for cleaning of the drains in the coming week to complete the target before the onset of monsoon season.