Ludhiana Congress submits memo to Punjab Governor against property tax

Ludhiana/Chandigarh, October 17, 2013: A delegation of the Congress leaders from Ludhiana today met the Punjab Governor Shivraj V. Patil in Chandigarh and submitted a memorandum seeking revocation of the decision to impose property tax in Punjab.
The delegation included District Congress president Pawan Dewan, former ministers Milkiat Singh Dakha, MLAs Rakesh Pandey, Surinder Dawer and Gurmail Pahalwan, Pappi Prashar, KK Bawa, Hemraj Aggarwal and Gurdeep Singh.
Ludhiana District Congress president Pawan Dewan said, the Governor agreed with them that the property tax should be reasonable and not exorbitant and it must not be imposed with retrospective effect.
The delegation in its memorandum told the Governor that the property tax was going to hit the people living in the urban and semi-urban areas very hard.
It said, “when the prices of essential commodities have gone so high, this additional and extra-burden of tax will only hit the common man very hard and it is requested that the property tax may be immediately withdrawn”.
Arguing against the retrospective taxation, the memorandum said, “there is no logic of imposing penalties on the house and plot owners in the colonies which were developed long time ago which the government is now saying are unauthorised and wants to regularise by charging huge fee from the people staying there”.
It said, the actual burden will mostly fall on the small plot and house owners as it will be virtually impossible to trace and track the colonisers who developed these colonies long time ago. Because the colonisers after developing the colonies exit from the scene and it will be the house and plot owners who will have to bear the brunt, it added.
The memorandum said, it was quite a retrograde decision of the state government apparently aimed at generating revenue while making the common man pay through his nose. “We understand that the state is facing the financial crunch but that does not mean it should burden the common man who can barely make his both ends meet with additional charges in the name of regularising his/her house or plot”, the memorandum said.
Making a strong case against the withdrawal of the tax the delegation urged the Governor to prevail upon the state government to withdraw the property tax and also that the regularisation policy must be revised so that the common man is not badly hit as the current scheme was likely to hit him hard. www.cityairnews.com