Owners of empty plots will also have to pay UD tax in Jaipur

Jaipur: Jaipur Municipal Corporation (JMC) has now decided to collect urban development (UD) tax from the owners of empty plots. If the owners fail to do so, the municipal corporation will seal those plots.

This decision was taken on Tuesday during a meeting conducted by the revenue officials of the corporation. In about a year and a half, the revenue officials have only managed to collect rupees 65 crores from the total outstanding amount of rupees 200 crores.

The state government had started Shehari Jan Kalyan Shivir earlier this year in May. After receiving approval from chief minister Vasundhara Raje, the urban development and housing department (UDH) had prepared a cabinet memo and the orders were released in April. Reportedly this had been proposed to regularise the colonies built on agricultural land before June 17, 1999.

Colonies where more than 75% construction work was done and plots on or above 20 feet roads were considered for regularisation. Plots purchased with unregistered documents in these colonies before December 31, 2015 are to be regularised at normal rates, whereas people who bought plots after December 31, 2015 were asked to pay double regularisation charges.

Earlier this year it was reported that Jaipur city mayor and district collector were engaged in a cold war over the collection of UD tax. The JMC administration had reportedly written a letter to district collector asking the return of all related files regarding UD tax. According to officials, many institutes had challenged JMC in court claiming it had calculated wrong UD tax of their properties. The court had directed these institutes to present their cases in front of either district collector or JMC. Majority of institutes had appealed district collector’s office for the hearing of their cases.