Panvel: MVA to hold mega protest on March 13 against PMC’s decision to collect retrospective property tax

Panvel: The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) will hold a mega protest on March 13 against the retrospective collection by the Panvel Municipal Corporation (PMC). The decision was taken during a meeting held on March 2.

While the matter of collection of property tax by the Panvel Municipal Corporation (PMC) is at the High Court, political parties do not want to lose the opportunity to encash common citizens' issues as the local body election is likely to happen this year.

Both Former MLC Balaram Patil and former leader of the opposition at PMC were present in the meeting. They plan to pressurise 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.