LUDHIANA: The civic body has launched a drive to recover pending rent from tenants under which notices are being served to defaulters who have not paid rent to the civic body. Officials started the drive earlier this time as they failed to achieve the target last year. Officials said that they would seal shops if defaulters did not clear their dues. This year, the income target from rental properties is around Rs 10 crore and not much has been recovered so far.
According to officials, the civic body has over 600 properties given on rent or allotment while 28 properties are on lease. Even though the properties are at prime locations, officials did not revise the rent, which was very less at the time of allotment, for a long time. The rent varies from a nominal Rs 400 to Rs 2,500 depending upon the location of properties.
In zone A, 204 properties are on rent, in zone C, 120 properties are on rent and zone D has the maximum of 301 properties on rent. There are no rental properties in zone B. Out of 28 properties on lease, 13 are in zone A, nine in zone D, and six in zone C.
An official claimed that they were checking records and preparing a list of defaulters to issue notices. He said they were yet to collect rent from the food and civil supplies department as they had taken space in the zone D office and would also issue notice to them.
MC superintendent Rajeev Bhardwaj said, “Superintendents concerned are checking the defaulter amount and notices will be served zone-wise. A drive to collect pending dues from defaulters will also start.”
A few years back, a policy was proposed under which tenants who had the properties could pay money to the MC on market price and become owners of the properties. However, even this failed to generate much response. The civic body can earn good amount of revenue from these rental properties if they implement revision.
