It's official: Shidlaghatta is now a City Municipal Council

Officials start by locking up shops whose rent was pending

The citizens of the town will get much better facilities now that the Municipal Council has officially become a City Municipal Council, president Mushtar Tanvir has said.

“The government grants will be hiked, enabling us to make the facilities much more accessible to the people,” he said, unveiling the nameboard that declared the Council as a City Municipal Council, on Tuesday.

The town administration has been upgraded to City Municipal Council due to an increase in population. “We can implement additional, but also special projects, said the president, adding that the revenue the Council gets from every ward would prove important in contributing to the development of the town. The revenue and tolls are the foundations on which the projects are planned and implemented. The citizens are, therefore, requested not to delay or keep from paying their taxes or tolls,” he added.

As a starting point in the new phase, the officials locked up on Tuesday the shops whose owners had failed to remit the rent to the Municipality.

The businessmen had taken the shops on rent during an auction called by the Municipality, but had failed to pay the rent the last one year, said the officials. As ordered by the deputy commissioner, the officials went on a round of the area on Tuesday along with police officials and collected the rent on the spot from some of the businessmen. For the others, they locked up the shops and opened them only once the owners paid the rent, said the officials.

The businessmen, naturally objected to what they called a ‘sudden’ and forced shutting up of their stores, “that too when the Municipality has not fixed the actual rent for some of the shops.” The owners added that while the Municipality claimed that they had provided shops, they had not paid attention to the quality of construction.

“We have to deal with leaking roofs, no proper electricity connection, for instance. When we submit requests for repair of the buildings, there is no response from the concerned authorities. The Municipality has been stressing on the need to pay rent every month, but has not bothered about the injustice of giving us barely equipped buildings,” complained some of the businessmen working from the Municipality-rented stores.

Revenue official Savitha answered that businessmen who had failed to pay the Municipality the due rent had already been sent notices three times. “Only after the last notice did we take action as per the deputy commissioner’s orders to lock up the shops whose rent had not been paid to the Municipality. An amount of Rs 28,17,277 from 78 shops is to yet to be paid to the Municipality,” she explained.