Asansol civic body withdraws water tax hike

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The mayor of Asansol Municipal Corporation (AMC), Bidhan Upadhyay has announced withdrawal of hikes in water tax of highrise buildings and apartments in Asansol.

Besides, he has also announced that Asansol Municipal Corporation is also not implementing the garbage tax as announced earlier.

The mayor said that on the instructions of chief minister and municipal affairs minister Firhad Hakim, the new rate of Rs10 for per kilolitre of water has been withdrawn and instead the old rate of Rs 7 per kilolitre of water will continue.

This will benefit several hundreds of residents who stay in highrises.

The various chambers of commerce and traders have also objected to the implementation of the garbage tax. The civic body has also withdrawn the garbage tax implementation at this moment.

Recently, Mamata Banerjee in a meeting instructed that the local bodies will have to take a stand for increasing any kind of taxes from the state government.

Like all other civic bodies in the state, Asansol is also becoming congested and the civic body has also started announcing through public address systems, urging all illegal encroachers to vacate their lands in Asansol town, Burnpur Steel township, Raniganj and other places.

The civic body and the BLLRO office is also probing the papers about a land of a RSS building in Asansol North area, after complaints from the state chief minister, based on inputs of law minister Moloy Ghatak.

The advocate of RSS has sought 15 days time to submit all necessary documents and already a notice has been served.

Asansol, the headquarters of the newest district in the state, is an unplanned city and is over 250 years old. But its importance has become immense after the formation of the new district headquarters.

In the coming days, a number of modernization and renovation works will take place including setting up of renovated Asansol railway station, modernization of IISCO Steel Plant in Burnpur, setting up of two new greenfield hotel projects, shopping malls etc.