BMC drafts new proposal for leased land

Mumbai, Feb 8 (UNI) The Improvement Committee of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation and the administration have drafted a new proposal on the leased BMC land in the city, wherein the lessee will have to give 50 per cent of the 'un-earned' income to the corporation.

Municipal commissioner Jairaj Phatak today said that initially, the lessee who was leased with large portions of land for many decades together, used to sell the land to a developer for unsubstantial amount and pay 7 percent of the un-earned income to the corporation.

''The land is leased for a paltry sum and the lessee sells it for a premium and gets un-earned income at the cost of the corporation, but now we want our due keeping in mind the rising cost of land,'' Mr Phatak said.

According to the BMC officials, a land owned and leased by the corporation is worth at least Rs 15 lakh crore and will only increase with the increase in prices.

The BIT itself has 552 hectares of land under its possession and in all the corporation has leased 4,511 hectares of land to various lessees in the city, out of which 123 leases has expired and have applied for renewal.

''The corporation has observed that the lessee gets huge profits from BMC owned land and our aim is to get our share and more profits,'' Mr Phatak said.

The administration had presented the proposal to the Improvement Committee this week, which cleared the same and it was presented in the BMC House yesterday, which referred back to the Improvement committee again after some members wanted some clarifications.

The Improvement committee members are of the view that, the lands that have so far been sold to the developers by the lessees have earned the corporation Rs 37 crore so far and could have earned more than Rs 273 crore if the new proposal would have been implemented.

Additional Municipal commissioner, Manu Kumar Srivastav, who is in charge of the proposal said, ''We can lower the taxes to a very marginal amount if we implement the proposal and do not have to depend on anyone for revenue.'' Most of the leases will end in the coming few years and 107 lessees have applied for transfer to the corporation.

UNI JN SR AG1818