PUNE: The Pune Cantonment Board (PCB) will be sending notices to 18 defaulters that have not paid the lease amount for the last several years. As of now, as many as 151 lease renewal cases are pending in the PCB due to which the civic body is losing out on revenue. Hence, now PCB is going to issue final notices to 18 defaulters to vacate the places.
DN Yadav, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of PCB, stated that there are 151 lease renewal cases pending with the PCB. He said, “On December 31, 2018, the lease renewal policy will expire and before that, we have to take stern action against these tenants. We have already issued several notices to these illegal occupants but they have neglected the warnings. Now, under the Public Premises Act of the Cantonment, we are going to issue a final notice to the defaulters to vacate the area or the premises as soon as possible.”
During the General Body meeting held on Tuesday, ward members were saying that the property tax has increased drastically. Kiran Mantri, a ward member of PCB, said, “One of the former CEOs had made a provision under which FSI was calculated according to the width of the area and height of the building. This meant that if the building is raised above a commercial setup, then the residential property will have to pay for the same FSI as the commercial property and there has been no change since then. This is the reason that we have higher property tax from a very long time.”
Similarly, Vivek Yadav, another ward member of PCB, said, “There are several tenants in Camp area whose owners are out of station or the house has been rented by their great grandfathers who are no more. These people do not have a lease agreement with them and they are poor people. They are not held responsible for any of these matters and if they are issued notices to vacate, where will they go? The issue needs to be handled from a humanitarian perspective. Also, the increasing property tax is another burden on these tenants. Therefore, they are not coming forward for lease renewal.”
Yadav further added, “A committee from Central government has started visiting big cantonments in India to discuss and solve similar issues and they will be visiting Pune Cantonment on November 10. The committee will discuss the issue and is expected to solve the issue.”
