Jalandhar loses hope to be smart city

Rachna Khaira

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, July 26

Due to the non-payment of taxes and other user charges by city residents, Jalandhar has moved down to No. 3, behind Mohali and Ludhiana in the list of cities to be shortlisted by the state government for the smart city project.

Also, the non-recovery of dues of the past few years has further weakened the claim of the city to be selected as a potential contender for the smart city project by the state government.

While Mohali is topping the list, Ludhiana is at No. 2, followed by Jalandhar and Patiala. Sources in the MC have said that in the initial phase itself, Jalandhar has lost around five points to Ludhiana due to over expenditure on the sewerage maintenance charges than its revenue generation. It has also lost around 10 points to Mohali due to less recovery done in property tax.

According to statistics received from the Department of Punjab, Local Government, out of the 1.45 lakh tax payers in Jalandhar, only 45,189 people have so far paid Rs 1.67 crore as tax money. This is far less compared to Mohali, where out of 33,000 tax payers; around 14,000 people have already paid Rs 73 lakh. Also, in Ludhiana 1.34 lakh tax payers, out of the 3.84 lakh, have paid Rs 3.5 crore as tax money.

According to Mayor Sunil Jyoti, though the recovery of user charges was almost double thanthe previous year, a little over 50 per cent of the city is paying these charges. “Also, the user charges imposed are almost one third of the money spent on operation and maintenance of the water supply and sewerage facilities. This has caused a huge gap between capital expenditure and revenue generation. In this scenario, there is a need to recover the dues, not just of 2014-15, but of all previous years as well,” said Jyoti. He urged the people to support the city’s claim to be included in the smart city project by paying all their present and pending dues in time.

Though the state government has not given any stipulated time to the municipal corporations of the contending cities to submit their balance-sheets, it is expected to ask for the submission of the final statistics by the end of this month.

The Punjab Urban Department was to collect Rs 154.38 crore as user charges last year. Sources said around Rs 1,500 crore was still due to be recovered across the state from people as user charges and property tax.