The Telangana Industrial Area Local Authorities (IALAs) Federation on Monday said that the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC)’s proposal to merger IALAs with itself was ill-conceived and was totally against the concept of self-governance of industrial parks.
“The total annual revenue of all the IALA service societies, except Hi-Tec Park which falls within the GHMC area, is not more than Rs 27 crore. Of this, the corporation continues to get its share. We are not clear as to why they are harping on taking over industrial parks. Do they not want to spend even that 59.8% also, which the societies have been doing diligently for the development of these areas?” questioned federation chairman RJ Mohan Rao.
Addressing a press conference, Rao said the idea of having notified municipal industrial area service societies (NMIASS) was initiated by the then chief minister of Andhra Pradesh Tanguturi Anjaiah in 1981. It took a definite shape by 1996 and the service societies were formed as nodal property tax collection agencies under the aegis of Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (APIIC) on September 21, 1994.
As per the arrangement worked out by the then government, the commissioners used to transfer eight% of the property tax collected in the industrial areas to Grandhalaya Samsthas, 35% to the GHMC, leaving a balance of 59.8% to IALAs, which was spent for maintenance and development works of the industrial parks.
“As the tax payers were also a part of the self-governance system, the tax collections improved immensely. In most of the societies, the collections went beyond 80%. This compared very favourably with the less than 30% collections that used to be the order of the day before the formation of the service societies,” Rao said.
The federation would soon meet Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhara Rao and ask him to drop the merger proposal on a permanent basis, besides requesting him to amend the GHMC Act to ensure self-governance of industrial parks by the entrepreneurs more effectively.