The Hindu : Corporation revives penalty collection drive

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 24, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Tamil Nadu-Chennai

Corporation revives penalty collection drive

By Saptarshi Bhattacharya

CHENNAI DEC. 23. The Chennai Corporation has resumed collection of penalty from owners of unauthorised buildings and those constructed in deviation of building permits.

The owners will have to pay the charges twice a year till the buildings are demolished or regularised.

The penalty collection has been revived following an instruction given by the Commissioner last month to the Zonal Officers. In 1997, the Revenue Department stopped collecting the levy.

The Commissioner's order is based on a note from the Vigilance Officer on the functioning of the Revenue Department.

Junior and assistant engineers of the Town Planning department in the Corporation have been authorised to collect the penalty from the owners of "unauthorised buildings" or "deviated structures". They will also issue the receipts.

Initially, Basin Bridge and Kilpauk zones were asked to identify unauthorised constructions or buildings constructed in deviation of permits in the respective Zones and levy the penalty at the rate of 50 paise per square foot. With the initial drive meeting with some success, the civic body decided to extend the drive to all Zones. In a recent meeting with Zonal Officials, the Corporation Commissioner, M.Kalaivanan, directed all the Zonal Officers to identify buildings which were unauthorised or have deviated from building plans, and levy penalty from them.

In Kilpauk Zone having 15 divisions, a total of 976 owners of buildings have so far been identified to have deviated from the original building plan.

Already, Rs.25 lakhs have been collected from defaulters. In Basin Bridge zone, the collection has touched Rs.6 lakhs.

K.Srinivasan, Zonal Officer, Zone 5 (Kilpauk), said he directed the engineers to obtain the list of cases pertaining to building plan violations filed with the IXX and XX Metropolitan Magistrate Courts.

"Once the list is obtained, we can sift the defaulters and go ahead with the collection," he added.

The levy of the penalty provided in Section 244 A of the Madras City Municipal Corporation Act, 1919, states that "... any building has been constructed or altered otherwise than in accordance with the plans and specifications which have been approved or in contravention of any of the provisions of this Act or any rule, by-law, order or declaration made under this Act the Commissioner may direct the owner of such building, to pay by way of penalty a sum not exceeding Rs.50 for every half-year or part thereof in respect of every one hundred square feet or part thereof... . until the portion or portions aforesaid are moved or rectified by the owner and the resulting construction is approved by the Commissioner."

The Revenue Department, which was originally collecting the penalty along with the half-yearly Property Tax collections, came in for criticism for having stopped the collection without any valid reason.

Some officials said the department never reached the target it set in every budget for property tax collections, but the subsequent budgets never accounted for the backlog.

"This is only a pointer to the fact that the Department was not effective in collection of taxes, let alone additional charges," said one of the officials.

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