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Municipal corporation turns heat on trading houses

Photo: Lingaraj Panda

UNDER SCANNER: A scene at a market in Bhubaneswar. —

BHUBANESWAR: After circulating list of habitual defaulters’ of holding taxes in different newspapers, Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) has now turned heat on trading houses who have been evading licence fees.

In the first phase, BMC has prepared a list of 32 organisations, which could spot their names in different advertisements shortly, for not paying licence fees though they have been doing business in the municipal area. Nursing Homes and Real Estate Developers have been detected to be major defaulters while the list figures traders from divergent segments, including stationery, readymade shops and motor dealers.

As per the list Mahadadhi Builders Private Limited has to pay Rs. 30,000 while Maa Shakti Hospital has been asked to clear Rs. 22000 pending licence fees.

The other prominent names included N. N. Builder, Swarna Nursing Home, Life Line Nursing Home.

"We have made personal requests as well as served notices, but they did not respond.

We finally decided to make the defaulters public by releasing their names," BMC Commissioner Aparajita Sarangi said here on Friday.

Meanwhile, BMC has conducted a survey in which only 6977 trading units have been detected while tentative tax to the tune of Rs. 83,67,612 can be collected from individuals and organisations.

Ms. Sarangi admitted that the BMC was able to collect only 30 per cent of potential license fee on the traders’ community.

The civic body had collected Rs 25,04,132 licence fees in 2005-06 and it doubled the collection last year with Rs 50,09,566.

"There is a huge scope to bring all trading units in the bracket of licence fees.

Due to our efforts, the number of trading units has gone up from 1000 last year to about 7000 this year," BMC Commissioner claimed.

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