THE NEWLY elected standing committee in the Surat Municipal Corporation made a major announcement during a meeting on Saturday, exempting property, water, fire and other taxes to 1.11 lakh residential properties having an area of 225 square metres in the city.

After the recently concluded civic elections, the first standing committee meeting was held at SMC on Friday evening to discuss on the proposed draft budget of Rs 653.97 crore. The standing committee chairman had added development works of Rs. 71.72 crore more into the proposed draft budget making it to a total of 6605.69 crore and approved it.
With the corona pandemic which had financially affected lives many low income group people as their living standards had gone downs.

SMC standing Committee Chairman Paresh Patel, had after consultation with the members had announced that SMC had for the first time taken decision to waive the taxes of 1,11,381 lakh residential properties whose area is 15 square meters and 225 square feet.

Patel had in his speech mentioned that the coivd pandemic had affected their lives and their income sources had also gone down, so such decision has been taken.

These families staying in such properties will not have to pay property tax, water charges, drainage, solid waste charges, street light, fire charges etc. to the SMC.

Of 1,11,381 residential properties, the highest properties lies in Udhna Zone which has 46,193 properties followed by Limbayat zone 28,570, Varachha Zone B 1818, Rander Zone 5,077, Central Zone 4080, Katargam zone 11,205, Varachha A zone 10,653 and Athwa Zone 3785.

The Limbayat and Udhna zone are major beneficiaries of such exemption in taxes, and a major chunk of residents of these areas are migrants who falls into low salary scale group. Such exemption in taxes will cost SMC to the tune of Rs 22 crore.

Six months ago, 27 villages and two municipalities had been included in the Surat city limit area and to provide basic facilities to such areas, SMC administration wing had proposed Rs. 140 crores, while Standing committee had added Rs. 20 crore more.

Apart from this, the medical treatment given from all the health centres in Surat run by SMC will be at free of costs to the public for one year.

The treatment includes, OPD cases, anti-rabies injections, deliveries, laboratory charges. Sources said that last year over 1.08 lakh people had taken treatment from 52 urban health centres of SMC.

Standing committee chairman Paresh Patel said, “By waiving the taxes of 1.11 lakh residential properties, we wanted to show that BJP is standing with Common and poor citizens of the city. We knew that during covid pandemic their financial income had gone down and to help them, we have taken such a historic decision. We are also working to give exemptions to the shops and middle class people in terms of taxes which will be declared in coming days.”