Delhi govt owes us Rs 1,181 crore, says North DMC mayor

The North Delhi Municipal Corporation on Thursday alleged that the Delhi government did not release Rs 1,181 crore to the corporation despite several communications and “deliberately pushed the civic body into a financial crisis”.

Addressing a press conference, Jai Prakash, mayor, North Delhi Municipal Corporation, alleged that files pertaining to clearance of “Basic Tax Assignment” are pending with the government since May 25. The corporation was owed Rs 240 crore under BTA “but those files are not being cleared”, he said.

Basic Tax Assignment is a segment where the state government collects tax on behalf of municipal corporations and pays the share of the civic body later.

Several phone calls and text messages to both the Delhi government and the Aam Aadmi Party were not answered. Earlier, a media advisor to Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal had said, “The court made it clear last month that Delhi government has no dues left.”

The mayor said as per recommendations of fifth Delhi finance commission the Delhi government has to give around Rs 3,000 crore to the north civic body in an year. In the financial year 2018-19, the corporation got only Rs 1,600 crore from the government while in 2019-20 only Rs 1,500 crore was given by the government, Prakash said.

“It is a deliberate attempt to create a financial problem. This BTA fund of Rs 240 crore is used to pay salaries of sanitation employees and DBC workers. This year as of now the Delhi government has released only Rs 387 crore to the north corporation and we are yet to get Rs 1,181 crore from them,” Prakash said.

According to north corporation officials, other than getting money from the government, the civic body generates revenue of Rs 2200 crore from its own resources such as property tax, advertisements, parking contracts, stamp duty tax among others. “This year the income of the corporation has gone down drastically due to Covid-19 pandemic so we need funds from the government to sail through the crisis,” the official said.

Cow shelter funds

Senior AAP leader Durgesh Pathak at a press conference on Thursday alleged that the municipal corporations had not released funds for the maintenance of cow shelters for last three years. Pathak said that there were around four cow shelters which are jointly maintained by the government and the civic bodies. The government and the corporation both give Rs 20 per cow per day to the cow shelter every year.

“The government paid it’s share of around Rs 10.5 crore to Rs 11 crore to cow shelters but the civic bodies have not paid their share of money for the last three years. Their councillors are engaged in fodder corruption,” Pathak alleged.

Responding to the allegations north corporation mayor Jai Prakash said, “The allegations of corruption are baseless. We have had a meeting with the managers of cow shelters and we are arranging funds for them. It could not be released as the government is not paying our dues.”