The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Forum demands rollback of UAV

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Sunday, Nov 30, 2008
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Forum demands rollback of UAV

Staff Reporter

We are for a transparent and equitable tax system, say members

Forum wants the Annual Rateable Value-based property tax system to be brought back
Congress legislators seek withdrawal of Ordinance on UAV system

Bangalore: The Citizens’ Action Forum (CAF) on Saturday passed a resolution demanding that the State Government bring back the Annual Rateable Value (ARV) based property tax system. It claimed that the Unit Area Value (UAV) system introduced recently was against the promise made to the people.

A resolution in this regard was passed during a public meeting organised by CAF in which hundreds of members from various residents’ welfare associations took part.

The CAF made it clear that its objective was to ensure a just, fair, transparent and equitable tax system and not to oppose collection of property tax.

The other demands include maintaining property registers on a continuous basis as per the provisions of the Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act; retaining five years as block period to revise tax rates as against the proposed revision once in three years; bringing all properties under the tax net ; holding systematic public hearings at the constituency level before introducing any comprehensive tax law; restricting random sampling of tax returns to five per cent instead of 15 per cent as proposed in the draft rules, and finalising the zonal classification of areas newly added to the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP)

The resolution appreciated the effort of the Government to bring all properties — both with khata and without it — under the property tax net without giving any assurance of regularising illegal structures.

Many participants felt that the BBMP had not been able to assess the correct tax from commercial properties and wanted the system to be streamlined instead of increasing the tax rate at regular intervals. They said that any changes in the tax system should be discussed in the elected council of the BBMP after elections are held to the civic body.

Congress legislators Dinesh Gundu Rao and N.L. Narendra Babu supported the CAF demands and urged the Government to withdraw the Ordinance promulgated on October 25 introducing the UAV system.

BJP legislators Ravi Subramanya and B.N. Vijay Kumar assured the participants at the meeting that they would convey the demands to Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa.

Mr. Vijay Kumar promised that he would speak to the Chief Minister and arrange a meeting of all MLAs from Bangalore to discuss the demand for continuing the ARV system till March next year and hoped that they would be able to convince Mr. Yeddyurappa.

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