The Bharatiya Janata Party-controlled Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has asked the Sabarmati Gandhi Ashram to pay Rs. 16 lakh as accumulated property taxes and fine.
However, the AMC has spared the historical “Hridaykunj,” where Gandhiji lived; the Gandhian museum; and “Meira Kutir” and “Vinoba Bhave Kutir,” where his two closest followers stayed, from the bill as they were granted exemption from all taxes years ago.
It was Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, as president of the Ahmedabad Municipality, who granted permanent exemption to the Ashram from all municipal taxes, which was further extended to the Ashram-run “goshala” when Morarji Desai was the Chief Minister of the erstwhile Bombay State before it was bifurcated into Gujarat and Maharashtra in 1960.
No commercial venture
“We do not run any commercial venture and are managing to pull on with donations from Gandhiji's followers. Where do we have funds to pay the municipal taxes” asked manager of the Sabarmati Harijan Ashram Trust, Ajit Jadhav.
The maximum concession the AMC is prepared to extend was to apply the existing “amnesty scheme,” under which deserving candidates are granted relief up to 50 per cent of the fine and interest on the unpaid bills.
Threat to seal Ashram
Mr. Jadhav said he wrote to Ahmedabad Mayor Asit Vora on March 10 to grant exemption to the Ashram from property tax, but so far Mr. Vora had not sent any reply, nor stopped officials from visiting the Ashram from time to time and issuing threats of sealing the Ashram, except the core Ashram premises which enjoyed tax exemption.
“You are welcome to seal the Ashram property. Our students will not mind sitting under a tree on the roadside and attend classes, but the AMC will become famous overnight by taking such punitive action against the Gandhian institution,” noted educationist and the former chairman of the trust, Iswarbhai Patel, had told the AMC officials once.
It has, however, not deterred the AMC officials and they have continued to issue the same threat over and over again.
Set up in 1917
When Gandhiji set up the Harijan Ashram on the banks of the Sabarmati in 1917, it was on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.
But with the expansion of the city, particularly after the creation of capital city Gandhinagar in the 1960s, the Sabarmati Ashram has become a prime location and the tax rates in the area had gone up manifold.
The “property” of the Ashram in question on which the AMC has slapped taxes included about a dozen buildings in the premises where the Ashram runs various educational institutions, primary and secondary schools, a teachers' training college, a weaving school, a girls' school, two hostels for the students as well as two unoccupied buildings.
“We run the schools free and most of the students hail from backward classes. The salary of the teachers is paid by the State government and we meet the administrative expenses and other incidental expenses from donations. We have no earnings, how are we going to pay the municipal taxes,” Mr. Jadhav asked.
More shockingly, the AMC has applied “commercial rate” for some of the buildings housing PTC College, considering that training teachers is a commercial venture for the Gandhian institution.
Congress started it all
It was during the Congress regime that the Sabarmati Ashram was first issued a tax bill in 1987. The Ashram in fact paid the taxes from 1987 to 2000 because the authorities told the trustees that pending grant of exemption, it was obligatory for the civic body to issue tax bills, but the money used to be refunded later in forms of donations. “The practice has stopped since the turn of the century and now we are in no position to pay the taxes,” Mr. Jadhav said.
“Besides, the tax rates then were low and we had some funds parked in the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Development Corporation bonds. We could meet our administrative expenses and also part-pay taxes from the interest we earned from the Narmada Corporation. But now we have run out of funds because a substantial part of the money parked with the Corporation had to be withdrawn for repairing the buildings damaged in the 2001 killer earthquake,” Mr. Jadhav pointed out.
“For the residential premises adjacent to the Ashram, the tenants, who were allotted houses by Gandhiji himself, are paying taxes, which were much more than the rent they pay to the Ashram. The exemption we are requesting is for the buildings where we house the educational institution for the poor and the backward. What is wrong” Mr. Jadhav asked.
To approach CM, Governor
If the matter is not settled at the municipal corporation level, the Trust is considering approaching Chief Minister Narendra Modi and Governor Kamala Beniwal. In fact in 2007, Governor Nawal Kishore Sharma got the tax bill waived but from the next year onwards the civic body again started imposing the tax bills and the matter has remained unresolved.
