City collector collects Rs 315 crore from lease rent, highest in 3 years

Mumbai: Mumbai city collector has collected Rs 315 crore from lease rent in the year 2018-19, which is the highest collection of rent in last three years.

However, the recovery is still a lot less than the pending dues.

According to the official estimate, the government is yet to recover more than Rs 900 crore.

The officials said that because of lack of manpower, they aren’t able to do a full recovery.

“We have taken few officers from the other departments in the collector office to work for lease and rent collection. But still we do not have enough manpower. If we get adequate manpower we can recover three times more revenue through rent,” said Shivajirao Jondhale collector of Mumbai city.

In the last year Rs 89 crore was recovered as a rent and Rs 60 crore in the year 2017.

“At present we cannot do site inspection because of less man power. If we just focus on lease and rent we will collect nearly Rs 900 crore. Site visit plays an important role for the same. We need to increase the manpower for which we had proposed two offices of tehsils for Mumbai city in 2017,” said Mr Jondhale.

Sight visits are important to identify illegal constructions on the land given on lease.

“Currently, Mumbai city has only one tehsil office. If the proposal to establish two tehsil offices in the city gets approved, it will automatically double the manpower,” an official said.

As per the proposal submitted by the collector office, Colaba and Dadar will be the two different tehsils.