: The proposed bifurcation of 12 wards of the City Corporation to form the Kazhakuttom Municipality could turn out to be a dampener to its ‘metropolitan city’ dreams as post-bifurcation, its population would fall below 10 lakh, one of the pre-conditions for a city to be upgraded to a metro. It could also hurt the civic body financially owing to the resultant fall in central funds and tax revenues.
“If the bifurcation plans go forward, it is sure that there would be a huge fall in Central funding for the Corporation. This would hit the projects for basic infrastructure mainly. Also, we have just finished the numbering and assessment activities in all wards and it would all go haywire now,” said Deputy Mayor G. Happy Kumar.
Some of the major institutions such as ISRO and Technopark will end up outside the Corporation limits, as they used to be before the previous delimitation five years back. But contrary to popular perception, the fall in revenue from here would not be huge, as Technopark is exempted from property tax.
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The Corporation collects a total of Rs.2 crore as property tax across these 12 wards against a total demand of Rs.5.64 crore. The professional tax collection amounts to Rs.5.14 crore against a demand of Rs.11.04 crore. This also throws up a question of source of revenue for the new municipality. The councillors of most of these wards would be pleased as this would be mean that their wards would be out of the purview of the Master Plan, which had kicked up a major controversy last year as people found their lands being frozen for various special purposes. Surprisingly, LDF councillor G.Vinod of Kattayikkonam, is among those who are glad to be free of the ‘Master plan’.
But at the same time, the proposed Municipality would have its own master plan which could bring back old issues. “We are just starting to reap the benefits of the previous delimitation when our wards became part of the Corporation. Now, when it has started falling into place, we are again cut away to be a part of the municipality. The spill-over projects would now be held up halfway. Though there would be more focus on the local level, it would be effective only if staff patterns are changed,” said Vijayakumar, Sreekaryam councillor.