Navi Mumbai: Citizens join in meeting to protest against PMC property tax collection

Navi Mumbai: The Kharghar unit of the People and Workers Party (PWP) held a meeting on Sunday in Kharghar to prepare a plan to protest against the alleged unreasonable property tax collection by the Panvel Municipal Corporation (PMC). They are visiting different housing societies and holding meetings with citizens.

On March 13, the Mahavikas Aghadi will hold a mega protest against the property collection of the PMC. For the last year, citizens have been opposing property tax collection by the Corporation. Citizens participated in the meeting and showed their support for the proposed protest.

Earlier, Former MLC Balaram Patil and former leader of the opposition at PMC held a meeting with locals and decided to join the MVA protest on March 13. The plan is to put pressure on the local and state governments to rationalize tax and collect property tax after a proposal was cleared by the general body.

Residents have been opposing the proposed property tax collection by the PMC administration as they say it is not fair. They say that they were already paying service charges to CIDCO even though the corporation was already formed. Now, the civic body is asking to pay retrospective property tax.

The PMC was formed in 2016 and a proposal to collect property tax was passed in January 2019. Now citizens say that the civic body should collect tax when a proposal has been passed, not when the corporation was formed. They say that during these periods, they continued to pay service charges to CIDCO. CIDCO stopped the collection of service charges in November 2022.