HUBLI: The Hubli-Dharwad Municipal Corporation (HDMC) will resume the sealing drive against commercial buildings that do not have completion certificates, after the current financial year ends on March 31.

Addressing presspersons here on Wednesday, HDMC Commissioner P. Manivannan said the corporation would resume its drive against hotels that did not provide hygienic food and water.

Precautionary step

With summer round the corner, as a precautionary measure, a drive would also be launched against roadside eateries selling vegetarian and non-vegetarian food and also meat shops, he said.

Replying to a query, he admitted there was a lapse on the part of the corporation in not conducting regular inspection of hotels and eateries. But it was difficult to conduct regular inspections as there were only three food inspectors for the whole corporation, he said.

The commissioner said he had directed the Chief Health Officer to conduct random raids on hotels. This would be taken up once the corporation completed the tax collection drive that would go on till March 31, he said.

Mr. Manivannan said that the staff would be concentrating on tax collection till then. The drive against buildings without completion certificates, and hotels, meat shops, and road eateries would start after that, he said.

The corporation would take suggestions from citizens' committees that were constituted recently, on the allocations in the budget. The budget estimate was likely to cross Rs. 100 crore, he said.

Revenue Officer Shanbhag said the corporation was likely to collect property tax to the tune of Rs. 19.5 crore in the current financial year. Last year, the collection was Rs. 20.71 crore as it included tax arrears.

As many as 30,000 buildings had been brought under the property tax net and steps were being taken to include another ten thousand buildings that had been outside the tax net so far, he said.

Mr. Manivannan said the Corporation had borrowed only Rs. 17.5 crore for the Rs. 30-crore road development project. It would take the remaining loan based on completion of various stages of work.

Superintending Engineer R.L. Naik said that three of the four packages of the road development project would be completed before March 31.

Work on the Hubli (North) package for which fresh tenders were called would go on till the end of May, he said.

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