BCC may offer roads to IT companies for adoption

BCC may offer roads to IT companies for adoption
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: The City is house to about 1550 IT companies and the Bangalore City Corporation (BCC) seems keen to offer its roads to these companies for adoption and maintenance.

“They need not bear all the expenses. The BCC will bear half of the cost,'' a senior IAS officer in the Government said.

This was one way the IT can display their corporate social responsibility while benefiting themselves too in the process with good roads, the officer suggested.

As for the complaints from IT companies, he said the pace of infrastructure development in Bangalore is not as fast as the economic development, but sections of IT companies can help the Government accelerate the pace.

The BCC officials say the civic body cannot meet the demands of the IT companies fully because bulk of the IT companies are outside the BCC limits, and hence, they are not paying for the urban infrastructure.

The only source of revenue for the BCC is property taxes, which is hardly sufficient to provide civic infrastructure of the kind demanded.

In the past, however, the IT companies took the initiative to build Nirmala Bangalore toilets and it was time the same initiative continued, an officer said.

“Till April 2003, the City Corporation was getting a two per cent cess on each property registered in the City on the value of the property”.

“The subsequent amendments to the Stamp Act unilaterally by the Government led to a sharp fall in this revenue as the BCC gets only 8 per cent of the stamp duty now”.

“In other words, where it was getting 2 per cent of a property value, the Corporation now gets 0.16 per cent,'' an official explained.

The BCC has also lost its powers to levy Octroi, which blocked another source of revenue.

Though the Centre has offered to meet 35 per cent of project costs taken up under national urban renewal mission scheme, there is little progress on this scheme because the Centre is yet to draw up guidelines on how it will go about the exercise.

The civic authorities feel that the Centre must contribute to Bangalore's infrastructure in a big way as it accounts for about Rs 14,000 of income tax revenue.

With all these bottlenecks, an official said, the BCC's handling of the 2400 tons of garbage that the City generates a day was one of the best and at international standards.