Nagpur:

In a surprise move, the urban development department (UDD) has increased the local body tax (

) compensation paid to Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) while reducing that of other cities.

’s share for the month of January has increased by around Rs20 crore, from Rs30.99 crore for December to Rs49.29 crore for January.

The overall allocation for the month of January has reduced by around Rs10 crore as compared to that for December. The allocation for December was Rs419.64 crore, which has reduced to Rs409.89 crore. This reduction in overall allocation plus higher compensation for NMC and some other municipal corporations has led to a reduction for many urban local bodies. These include Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC), Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) etc

The reduction for Pune has been drastic, from Rs81.39 crore to Rs50.91 crore and for Pimpri-Chinchwad it has come down from Rs66.49 crore to Rs47.35 crore. The biggest beneficiary of this revision has been Navi Mumbai, whose allocation has increased from Rs11.55 crore to a whopping Rs75.53 crore.

Other municipal corporations from Vidarbha have not been as lucky as Nagpur. Their allocations have gone down:

’s share has reduced from Rs3.42 crore to Rs2.58 crore, Amravati Rs7.13 crore to Rs6.60 crore and Akola Rs4.2 crore to Rs1.97 crore.

Twenty-five municipal corporations in the state are getting LBT compensation after the state government abolished the tax from August 1. The compensation was calculated on the basis of highest annual revenue earned by the concerned corporation through LBT or octroi. The formula, however, became redundant after the government abolished LBT on petrol and diesel too from October 1.

Mayor Pravin Datke thanked chief minister Devendra Fadnavis for increasing the allocation. “This is a New Year’s gift for us. It is the result of efforts taken by local ministers and corporation office-bearers and the municipal commissioner. We will, however, urge the government to increase the compensation amount further,” he said.

The local municipal officials were unaware of the reason for government’s benevolence towards NMC. Even Ranjit Patil, minister of state for urban development, was not aware of the revision. Finance minister Sudhir Mungantiwar said the revision was possibly due to over or under disbursement of the compensation amount last month.