The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has criticised the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and said that it is causing a lot of financial harassment to traders. CAIT has sought the intervention of Union Home Minister Amit Shah and alleged the unified Municipal Corporation of Delhi is indulging into an unjustified tax increase.
In a communication sent to Amit Shah, CAIT has urged for his direct intervention on the issue of arbitrary, irrational, and unjustified increase of rates for property tax, parking & conversion charges, trade licence fees and imposition of Safai Tax on the traders of Delhi. Conducting business activities in Delhi has become quite cumbersome and in a regular basis, the trade is being targeted to fetch more revenue on one pretext or the other. If it goes like this, the traders of Delhi will be compelled to shift their business activities to nearby areas of UP and Haryana- lamented CAIT.
The CAIT has sent a similar communication to Union Urban Development Minister Hardeep Singh Puri.
In its communication to Amit Shah, CAIT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said that the Municipal Corporation of Delhi has made an unprecedented increase in property tax, trade license fees and conversion & parking charges which has levied a tremendous financial burden on the trading community of Delhi. Besides, the MCD has also issued a large number of notices to traders imposing unwarranted Safai Tax.
Trader body also alleged that MCD which took thousands of crores of rupees as parking & conversion charges from the traders of Delhi has flouted the norms of the Central government under which the said collection of tax was to be deposited in an " escrow account" and was to be utilised for the development of parking and other infrastructure in commercial markets in consultation with the respective trade association.
Khandelwal further said that "Even if the Supreme Court has also ratified this decision of the Central government laid out in Master Plan 2021. We are sorry to note that said amount instead of development of parking etc has been used for some other unknown purposes by the MCD. It's a case of perjury."
(With inputs from agencies)