Land rates likely to go up

As part of its efforts to shore up revenues which plummeted due to COVID-19 crisis, the government is contemplating increasing the land rates by 10% to 30% where there is a huge mismatch between the prevailing market rate and the registration value.

This is to achieve the much-needed market value correction and to protect the avenues for revenue generation in a balanced manner, according to an official release.

The government almost got no revenue from the sale of land and related transactions from the end of March to the first week of May.

Focus has since been laid on the need for revising the land rates, especially in the urban areas. The revenue derived from stamps and registration services is next only to the GST and the excise revenue.

The government is also moving towards rationalisation and simplification of the slab of land rates, rectifying anomalies in the rates of different types of agricultural land and lands situated along the national and State highways and on better indexing of urban properties as per the prevalent land use like residential or commercial.

District-level committees have carried out the elaborate exercise of land rate revision with the cooperation of all departments concerned on the basis of lots of data culled from GIS maps and other field information.