Urban News

The Hindu 09.09.2009

Local bodies to act tough on defaulting cable TV operators

Serena Josephine M and Preeti Narayan

PUDUCHERRY: The Puducherry and Oulgaret municipalities will come down hard on defaulting cable television operators in the respective limits. While the Puducherry municipality has set a deadline for payment of tax dues, the Oulgaret municipality has decided to cut cable connections without prior intimation.

There are 66 cable operators in 42 wards of Puducherry municipality. The operators claimed that they had a subscriber base of 9,467 up to 2006 in the municipality limits - a claim now proved wrong, said senior officials of the municipality.

“The re-survey of the cable operators’ subscriber base in 15 wards conducted from July 2009 found that there were 16,300 households with cable television connections. We will be covering the remaining wards in 15 days,” Commissioner of Puducherry Municipality S. Kuppusamy said. As per returns furnished by cable operators in Oulgaret municipality, there are 68 cable TV operators providing 8,600 connections. But officials said that the number of connections are lot more.

According to a property tax survey conducted by the local body in 2005, over 40,000 houses were assessed. The officials said considering that all these houses have cable connections, and a modest estimation of cable TV subscription fee being Rs. 100, the municipality should is due get Rs. 4 lakh a month as entertainment tax. This translates to a loss of around Rs. 48 lakh a year.

Taking serious note of continuous defaults, the municipalities have decided to crackdown on the cable operators to collect tax arrears. In Puducherry municipality, from June 1, 2002 to December 31, 2006, cable operators had to pay a total tax of Rs. 58.46 lakh. So far, Rs. 41.37 lakh has been collected. On the other hand, Rs. 59.65 lakh stands as tax arrears in Oulgaret municipality, with only Rs. 31.43 lakh having been collected so far from June 2000 to March 2009.

The Hindu 09.09.2009

Bidadi master plan gets approval

Staff Reporter

BANGALORE: The Interim Master Plan (IMP) for the Bidadi Area Planning Zone and the Ramanagara-Chennapatna Local Planning Area, where land conversion had been stopped for over two years, has been approved by the State Government, bringing relief to the stakeholders. In all, about 2,500 hectares of land has been opened up for development. Work in these areas had come to a standstill as the Government had, on March 20, 2007, banned conversion of land pending completion of the IMP.

“The IMPs have been prepared to give a direction to the growth and prevent haphazard development. Uninhibited growth cannot be allowed here as rural character of the area had to be protected. Besides this is an environmentally-sensitive region,” a senior Bangalore Metropolitan Region Development Authority official told The Hindu.

The Special Area Plan 2021 for “Bidadi Urbanisable Block” is for an extent of 462 sq km spread over 111 villages, and the plan has been approved under the Bangalore Metropolitan Region Development Authority Act.

The IMP for an extent of 63 sq km in 25 villages of Ramanagara-Channapatna has been approved under the Karnataka Town and Country Planning Act. A notification to this effect was issued by the Urban Development Department on September 5.

Growth of population by about 2.5 lakh over the next 20 years has been considered for the preparation of the Bidadi IMP. “The plan assumes a density of 95 to 100 persons per hectare and approximately about 2,500 hectares have been opened up for development,” the official said.