Residents living under the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation will have to start paying conservancy and sewage collection charges from April. The decision was made in the budget that was passed on Monday.
The amount will be calculated on the annual value of the property. While a 1 per cent charge has been fixed for conservancy charges, 0.7 per cent will be collected for sewage services rendered to the residents. The amount will in turn be added to the property tax bills.
Revenue sources
The civic body has listed several avenues of revenue generation for the fiscal year of 2024-25 including property tax, revenue from sale of shops and rent collected from markets, building plan sanction and other fees, and rent collected from renting out of auditoriums and playgrounds among others.
For this financial year, the civic body has listed Rs 40 crore from the collection of property tax from residential as well as commercial buildings in all 41 wards.
In terms of revenue, there are fees collected for name transfer during sale of shops from one owner to another, rent collected from shops in all 16 block markets in Salt Lake and other markets such as the ones in Baguiati. From these sources, the civic body has listed a projected revenue collection of Rs 2 crore while advertisement taxes from hoardings and other avenues has been estimated at Rs 20 lakh.
The other substantial head under which the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation has listed its earnings is building plan sanction and other charges including mutation fees. The civic body is planning to collect as much as Rs 30 crore from these.
Under collection of fees from rent and permits from cable lines and towers, the corporation has listed Rs 50 lakh as its projected earnings while it plans to raise Rs 1 crore from its sporting facilities.
The corporation runs two swimming pools, one in CJ Block and the other opposite Mayukh Bhavan, and a football academy. Earnings from The Bidhannagar Mela (Utsav) has been pegged at Rs 1 crore this year.
Each councilor will be allotted a sum of Rs 70 lakh towards their funds for carrying out work under various categories in their respective wards. Earlier the amount used to be Rs 50 lakh per ward.
Road repair hope
In terms of expenses, a sum of Rs 51 crore has been allotted for road repairs and other tertiary works.
Of this, Rs 34.3 crore has been set specifically for concrete roads while Rs 17.7 crore has been allocated for laying and relaying of bituminous roads.
The Telegraph has reported on multiple occasions about the sorry state of the roads in Salt Lake and its adjoining areas and how little else apart from patchwork repairs has been done over the past several years.
The civic body has also allotted Rs 62 crore for the laying of pipelines in several wards of the Corporation especially in areas falling under the erstwhile Rajarhat Gopalpur Municipality and the Mahishbathan II gram panchayat.
Around Rs 28 crore has been set aside for overhauling the water tanks in Salt Lake and replacing pumps installed inside them.
The civic body has also set aside funds for building Rabindra Bhavan in FE Block opposite Netaji Island and the building for a veterinary hospital near KB-KCBlock.
