If everything goes as planned, the South Delhi Municipal Corporation will soon have more ways to generate revenue. The corporation has proposed an idea to hire a real estate management company that will identify unused and vacant lands under the SDMC and also come up with ways for best utilisation. This step will help the generate revenue and improve the staggering financial condition.
During a Standing Committee meeting last month, South MCD leader of the House Ashish Sood highlighted the issue of the need to identify lands that are probably lying vacant. “There has always been this need to identify the areas that are under South Delhi Municipal Corporation but are not being used probably because the corporation might not be aware about it. There are unidentified lands are encroached upon or are lying unheard about,” Sood said.
The real estate management company will be not only be tasked to identify and root out vacant and unused lands but also provide ideas on how to utilise that particular land in order to fetch fat revenue. “The company will tell us what sort of construction can be done in a particular area of land and how will that help us extract revenue. While some areas are fit to construct buildings, some are good for parking purpose,” said Sood.
While the idea has just been proposed in South Corporation, the authorities are mulling over the matter seriously.
Previously, the need to identify the vacant land was taken up in the SDMC’s Budget meetings too. leader of Opposition Farhad Suri had pointed out that going by the trend in the last few years it seems that by the end of this financial year, the South Delhi Municipal Corporation will have an income shortfall of Rs1 ,200 crore. Suri said that Commissioner Puneet Kumar Goel’s estimate of a Rs 600 crore decrease in targeted revenue had not included many other factors.
“More vacant land needs to be identified. The inefficiency of the Corporation is evident as it has been unable to boost its internal sources of revenue. The actual shortfall will be at least Rs 1,200 crore as the Commissioner included money from the municipal reform fund in his income estimate even though the Delhi Government has not given this in years,” said Suri.
The SDMC, with this plan plan, is also hoping to re-claim land from squatters and brazen mafia. The civic body said there are many cases of land being acquired by small-time property dealers, vendors, slum dwellers, musclemen, etc and even there is no figure that how many plots/ land have been eaten up by such elements.