Gurugram civic body starts survey to track business units in residential areas

GURUGRAM: MCG has started a fresh survey to identify commercial establishments running illegally in residential areas. Officials said these establishments are not adding to the revenue of the civic body since it cannot issue trade licences to commercial units set up in residential areas according to the law.

After collating the data of such establishments, MCG will decide on the further course of action for these illegal establishments set up in residential areas. For example, Basai road, Khandsa road and Pataudi road are residential areas in MCG records but several shops have been established there over time.

Pradeep Ahlawat, joint commissioner-1, said, “There are several areas in my zone that are commercial but are recorded as residential areas in the city. My team has been working on this survey since last Friday and it will be completed by the weekend. The survey will collect information such as owners, type of business they are doing, whether they have taken a trade licence or not.”

On the reason to undertake this survey, the joint commissioner said, “This would be beneficial to us in two ways — one is that we will get to know the amount of trade licence fees that MCG could earn annually but is not earning currently. Another benefit is that this would also help generate data on the number of commercial establishments in the zone and the type of business they are doing and other details.”

Officials said that as per rough estimates, there are around 1,000 shops in zone-1 and MCG can generate a revenue of around Rs 1 crore annually if these alone get their trade licences. The zone currently is getting trade licence fees mainly from commercial units in Sector10 and 10A.

MCG had estimated to generate a revenue of around Rs 15 crore from trade licence fees in the 2020-21 fiscal. However, the civic body could generate only 55% of the projected revenue out of trade licences. The civic body is estimated to generate Rs 12 crore from trade licence fees in the 2021-22 financial year.