MARGAO
Where there’s a will, there’s a way, so goes the old age saying. Margao City Fathers and the Municipal Babus, including the Chief Officers, may have to explain what has stopped the Margao Municipal Council from implementing the 2018 GIS mapping survey that had projected handsome revenue to the civic body amounting to crores of rupees?
For, it’s now six years since the private agency had submitted the GIS mapping survey to the Margao Municipal Council. The GIS mapping had projected an additional revenue by way of taxes and trade licenses amounting to Rs 3.5 crore from the properties located in just one Municipal ward, Ward No 14. The report had stated how commercial establishments, besides residential houses had evaded house tax to the civic body.
Instead of implementing the GIS survey in the last six years, the MMC is now looking forward to the GSUDA-appointed agency to carry out the mapping of the properties in all the 25 Municipal wards.
In fact, the GIS survey was kept under wraps since 2018 with officials feigning ignorance about the survey report prepared by a private agency. It was only after the issue took centre stage in the Legislative Assembly in August last year that outgoing Chief Officer Gaurish Sankhwalkar asserted that the GIS report has not gone missing, but is very much lying in the municipal building.
Sankhwalkar and his predecessors may have to explain to Madgavkars “ why did the Margao Municipal Council not implement the GIS mapping in the city when the report projected crores of rupees revenue to the civic body from trade licenses and house taxes?
