Pay rent or leave, MC tells 400 traders

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, February 20

The estate wing of the Municipal Corporation (MC) has issued notices to more than 400 of its tenant shopkeepers, asking them to pay rent within one week or leave the possession.

According to information, the MC owns more than 1,100 shops in the city in which tenants have been running their business for years. Most of them are not paying the rent.

The MC had offered the tenets to buy the properties for which they have been paying the rent. Most of the shopkeepers are even not paying the rent to MC. Instead of vacating the shops, the MC had issued a notice to the shopkeepers to submit a demand draft for Rs 1,000 if they were interested to buy the shops till March 31, 2018.

The estate wing had received applications from 691 shopkeepers while the others did not respond. The General House has passed a resolution to sell these shops. The resolution was sent to the government for approval.

Estate Officer Sushant Bhatia said, “We have served notices to the shopkeepers to pay the pending rent. If someone doesn’t respond, we will get the property vacated.”

MC officials expect to generate more than Rs 60 crore from the auction of these shops.  Most of these properties are at prime location, such as the inner ring road, bus stand, IDH Market or Gurdwara Shaheedan Sahib Market.