Madhya Pradesh UAD deptt introduces innovative ideas to make civic bodies ‘self-reliant’

BHOPAL / Stepping up to make civic bodies self-reliant, the Madhya Pradesh Urban Administration and Development (UAD) department has introduced innovative ideas to increase the income of the bodies. A 15 per cent hike in revenue has been witnessed in only six months.

Talking to The Sun Today, the Commissioner of UAD, Bharat Yadav, a 2008 batch IAS (Indian Administrative Services) officer of the MP cadre said that without increasing the revenue, the civic bodies could not be self-sufficient, so the department had taken several initiatives in this regard. Because a self-reliant civic body could make decisions in a better way for public welfare as the need of local people, he said.

“Keeping it in mind, the department has taken a major decision of linking the property tax slab with the collector guidelines rates, which has given a fruitful result in a short span of six months as the income of the urban bodies has increased by 15 per cent”, Yadav said.

The UAD commissioner also said that along with the property tax, the collection of water and solid waste tax has also been geared up by the civic bodies, which had helped in revenue generation.

A total hike of 15 per cent in revenue generation has been reported in all the Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) of the state. There are 360 ULBs in Madhya Pradesh including 14 Municipal Corporations (MCs), 96 Nagar Palika Parishads (NPPs) and 250 Nagar Panchayats (NPs).

Yadav added that to arise competition among the ULBs for revenue generation, a review meeting is held through video conferencing every fifteen days, in which the top 5 and bottom five ULBs have been determined and he himself takes part in the meeting.

The ULBs have been categorised on a population-based which are in the range from 20-50 thousand, 50,000 to 1 lakh, 1-3 lakh, 3-10 lakh and 10 lacks to above.

In Rewa MC, the maximum hike of 21 per cent in revenue collections has been reported in the current financial year in comparison to the 2021-22 fiscal year. Similarly, 15, 12, 11, 10, 10, 9, 8, 5, and 4 per cent ramp up in revenue has been reported in MCs Bhopal, Chhindwara, Satna, Sagar, Ujjain, Jabalpur, Burhanpur, Ratlam and Gwalior, respectively.

Likewise, an 11 and 24 per cent increase has been reported in NPPs and NPs in the state. The NPs Betul, Chhatarpur, Sendhwa, Raghogarh, Sarangpur and Rajgarh (Bhopal) and the NPPs Maksi, Dindori, Kukshi, Nagod and Rajgarh have performed excellent in revenue generation.

The Commissioner further added that the preparations for taking part in city financial and beautification ranking have been started by the department, which would be conducted by the Union Ministry of Urban Development, the initiative would a more helpful to the ULBs to generate revenues.