AMC to appoint private agency to collect license fee from business fraternity!

Aurangabad, Jan 1:

In a surprising development, one more proposal inviting private participation has come to surface on Friday. The Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) administration has approved the proposal of appointing a private contractor to collect license fee from the merchants and business fraternity in the city.

It is learnt that the AMC administration had tabled a proposal for discussion before the general body (GB) meeting on December 18, 2018. It stated that each trader or merchant running a business within AMC limits would have to obtain an independent license from the AMC. The officials made the proposal on the lines of Meera-Bhayander Municipal Corporation.

The minimum license fee for first registration was Rs 100 and the maximum was up till Rs 30,000. Besides, the license was to renew every year on payment of fixed charges. The then-mayor Nandkumar Ghodele approved all the administrative and non-administrative proposals in the meeting but had announced a stay on the above proposal. In the past, the AMC administration had submitted similar proposal before the GB in the year 2014, but it was rejected. Hence another attempt was made in 2018.

The proposal underlined that more than 106 types of business and the operators of those businesses would have to register and obtain a license from the AMC. The list includes factories, hotels, food processing units, sweet marts, bakeries, telephone booths, bars, restaurants, hospitals, refreshment centres, Chinese food centres, food mess, oil mills, lodging and boardings, medical stores, photo studios, electronic and electric gadgets, pan stalls, flour mills, milk centres, showrooms, cloth stores, Kirana shops, tailoring shops, banks, ice cream parlours etc.

Former mayor Ghodele said, " The proposal of collecting license fee from the business fraternity was approved afterwards with the correction in the administrative proposal. The proposal was sent to administration for further action, but there was no mention of collecting license fees through a private contractor."

Approval from UDD

Surprisingly, the administrative proposal had been approved by the state''s Urban Development Department on November 26, 2020. The license charges had also been fixed. Accordingly, the establishments will be registered, and the AMC will collect the charges. As the municipal corporation deprives of the required workforce and machinery to do so, the administrator approves to appoint a representative to collect the license charges.

Earlier, the proposal of inviting expression of interest (EoI) to operate seven AMC schools and develop five open spaces on public, private partnership (PPP) mode had triggered a controversy. As a result, the guardian minister Subhash Desai intervened and scrapped the proposal which was passed by the AMC administrator, on Thursday.