The Madras High Court Bench here today rejected a plea by private educational institutions to quash demand notices issued by this city corporation to them for payment of Rs 20.85 crore as property tax.
Disposing their petitions, Justice R Mahadevan agreed with the corporation counsel's view that under the Corporation Act, the institutions should satisfy two conditions, first of which was that these should be run on philanthropic purposes and the other that the council should have passed a resolution exempting them from paying tax by approving the institutions.
The judge observed that petitioners were not philanthropic institutions and it was not the case that they were running the schools without receiving fees. they should satisfy the conditions, he said.
The judge said the schools were at liberty to submit petitions and seek approval from the council for taking exemption. Otherwise it was for the corporation to take appropriate action to see that property tax was collected from them without any delay.
St John's matriculation school had received property tax notice for Rs 75.73 lakh from 2008-09 to 2015-16. Similarly some other petitioner schools had also received notice.
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