5 times goes up NA cess!!

 While the controversy over irregular Non Agricultural (NA) clearances has rocked Wardha Road realty boom, the Revenue Department has quietly hiked the NA cess of agriculture land by five times depending upon the gradation by revenue authorities. The decision of upward revision of NA cess was taken by Revenue Department since the rates were determined way back in 1966.

Looking at the discrepancy of NA cess collected from urban and non-urban areas, Revenue Department took this major policy decision. Now, the NA lands falling within non-urban areas will be charged five times more (for Revenue land-Category I and II). Maharashtra legislature has also cleared the amendment to Maharashtra Land Revenue Code during its monsoon session and the same will be brought into force from August 1, 2008. District Collectors have been asked to determine NA cess of such lands in accordance with its actual non-agricultural usage. In any case, such NA cess should not be less than the agricultural cess to be collected from such land situated in non-urban areas. According to the provisions of Maharashtra Land Revenue Code, the state is divided into urban and non-urban areas. The urban area includes Municipal Council and Municipal Corporation areas and urban areas declared by the Government under Section 2 (42) of the Revenue Code. However, this category of urban area has been scrapped by the Government from August 1, 2003 and villages located in such areas are now a part of the non-urban areas and hence subjected to a very meagre NA cess. The NA cess is finalised as per Section 123 of the Revenue Code and the Government had finalised two paisa per square meter for Revenue land-Category I and one paisa per square meter for Revenue land-Category II in the year 1966. However, the NA clearances granted to urban area lands are subjected to heavy NA cess, which has evoked great resentment in cities like Nagpur. The district administration and Nagpur Improvement Trust/Nagpur Municipal Corporation had locked horns over collection of NA cess in the past and on two occasions the District Collector had frozen the accounts of civic bodies for not depositing NA cess. Now, the Revenue Department has directed the district administration to classify Revenue lands in two categories and fix the new NA cess and recover them from August 1, 2008, that is, the next financial year.

~ by nagpurestate on December 22, 2007.