Karnataka   

Drive on to regularise unauthorised shops

Chitradurga: A month after the Chitradurga City Municipal Council launched a drive to regularise unauthorised shops in the city, the CMC has earned revenue of Rs. 10.5 lakh by regularising 1,265 shops. According to CMC officials, the drive will go on for one more month.

The CMC officials said that the drive had been launched to prevent substantial revenue loss to the CMC from shops and commercial establishments that had not been regularised.

In a recent survey, the CMC identified nearly 4,000 shops that had been functioning without a trade licence from the CMC. “Because of this, we were losing revenue. We then decided to undertake the drive to regularise all these shops,” said the CMC office manager, N. Nisar Ahmed.

After regularising 1,265 shops in the city, the CMC is expected to regularise the remaining unauthorised establishments within a month and add another Rs. 10 lakh to its account.

Mr. Ahmed said that the present licence fee varied between Rs. 300 and Rs. 3,000 based on the size and turnover of the shops. The fee structure was around a decade old. “The council recently passed a resolution to increase the annual tax on the shops. The new fee structure will be announced in the next general meeting scheduled this month,” he said. The responsibility for revenue collection had been transferred from the Health Department to the Revenue Department, he said.

Revenue inspector A.H. Nagraj said that some shop owners, mainly pharmacists and garment retailers, were making lame excuses to avoid paying tax stating that they did not come under the purview of the CMC. “Since there is no such rule, we have asked them to regularise their shops, or else a case will be filed against them in a local court,” he said.

Mr. Nagraj said that the CMC had also increased the fee on the display of hoarding from Rs. 1,800 to Rs. 3,600.

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