East Delhi Municipal Corporation Mayor Shyam Sunder Aggarwal on Wednesday said that it has not “collected house tax from any religious institution”. This comes a day after AAP said that the BJP-led EDMC “is trying to seal temples and forcing them to pay property tax”.
“A tax notice which was to be sent to a community hall was mistakenly sent to a temple adjacent to it. A show-cause notice has been issued to the official who sent it and he will have to reply,” an official said.
“The EDMC has never collected property tax from religious institutions and it will never do it in the future. Nothing regarding this was passed in the Standing Committee or the House sessions. We are investigation the matter in which a notice was sent to a place of worship and we will look into whether there’s a conspiracy in this case,” Mr. Aggarwal said.
Mr. Malhotra said that under the DMC Act (1957), “religious places of worship are exempted from paying House tax”.
Meanwhile, AAP leader Atishi on Wednesday said the North Delhi Municipal Corporation has “imposed parking charges at Hanuman Mandir which was previously free”.
“This is the first time since the formation of the municipal corporation that parking charges have been imposed at the Hanuman Mandir. This temple isn’t some commercial land but a sacred space with which lakhs of people’s faith is connected. And the BJP, the ardent devotee of Lord Shri Ram, who demand votes in the name of temples, is now making money off of one such temple,” she said.
