Technical survey of mobile towers in September!AMC to rope in private partner to generate revenue through regularising illegal towers

Rafique Aziz

Aurangabad, Aug 13:

To recoup its financial crisis, the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) is seeking consultancy from a private partner in conducting a technical survey of mobile towers in the city from next month. The survey aims at detecting unauthorised towers, bring them under the ambit of tax from the current financial year!

Our aim is to generate revenue: ACT

The assessor and collector of tax (ACT) Aparna Thete said, " We are seeking the assistance of a private consultant in conducting the technical survey of mobile towers. We have floated a tender and hopes to start the survey by next month. The jurisdiction of AMC has nine zones comprising 115 wards. As per our knowledge, there are more than 650 mobile towers in the city. Of which 62 are legal and the remaining are illegal. The survey will help to identify the existing towers and collect taxes from them."

The AMC collects a single tax from a legal tower (it varies from area and type of property on which is installed) and a double tax from an illegal tower as per the State Government's GR issued in the year 2008. The AMC levy's 94.5 per cent of the Net Rateable Value (NRV) as a tax on space occupied by each mobile tower. Besides, a 2 per cent penalty is also charged for the late payment.

The sources added, " A large number of mobile towers operational in the city without permission from the civic body. The AMC is losing revenue because of these unauthorised mobile towers. Hence the AMC has decided to appoint an agency. Besides, it has also come to notice that few mobile companies had installed their towers on properties which deprive of building permission from the AMC (not all). This helps them to negotiate and fix the rent with the landlord at their convenience. It is mandatory upon the property-holder to obtain the latest tax receipt or no-objection certificate from the company every year, but the pattern seems to be not in practice due to reasons better known to them."

Regularise voluntarily before the technical survey or Geo-mapping

A few years ago, the AMC had taken strict action by sealing towers when the mobile companies failed to pay their taxes regularly. To evade action against them and avoid inconvenience to the customers, the mobile companies swung into action, sat across the table with the civic officials to settle the issue. Meanwhile, this is the golden chance for the companies to regularise their towers voluntarily or else after technical survey and the GEO-mapping of properties, the details of each property along with satellite images will be available with the AMC. The stringent action may push the landlord as well as the companies to the embarrassing situations and displeasure of customers due to disruption in services, pointed out the AMC sources.

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Poor recovery of tax from mobile towers in 5 years

It has been observed that the collection of tax from the mobile towers is poor. The civic officials could not even succeed in collecting 50 per cent of the target collection in the past five years. The year-wise collection of revenue and the target (in bracket) is as follows - 2017-18, Rs 7.25 crore (Rs 22 cr); 2018-19, Rs 7.33 cr (Rs 30.97 cr); 2019-20, Rs 12.55 cr (Rs 39.31 cr); 2020-21, Rs 10.23 cr (Rs 45.54 cr) and 2021-22, Rs 1.22 cr (Rs 47.62 cr).