PUNE: Giving a complete break to the proud tradition of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) to make public all subjects on the agenda in its crucial meetings well in advance, municipal commissioner Mahesh Zagade did manage to sneak in a proposal to hike property, water and other taxes by a whopping 22 per cent, before the standing committee, only to be told that it would consider it only at a special meeting to be held sometime later.

While the water tax will take into its ambit each and every Puneites, the property tax hike is likely to affect at least six lakh property owners.

One reason being given for the drastic hike is the mandatory tax revisions that the JNNURM scheme has imposed on the PMC, to raise resources to bear the 30 per cent load that the PMC shares in the JNNURM projects.

Interestingly, a good number of JNNURM projects have been awarded to the companies that submitted tenders quoting much above the maximum price quoted by the PMC.

It is not known who the PMC believes should bear these additional costs. The central government, on its parts had made it clear that it would not bear any cost escalations, once the project is approved.

It would be interesting to see how the tax hike proposed by the commissioner gets the standing committee approval.

THE PROPOSED HIKE IN VARIOUS TAXES

Hoping to rake in an additional revenue of Rs 160 crore in the annual budget for next year, the commissioner promptly doubled water taxes in each of the existing categories of Rs 900, Rs 1,000 and Rs 1,100, and a 22 per cent hike under various heads under property taxes, but none of them had found mention in the original standing committee agenda, released three days before the meeting