Gurugram: Rs 122 crore paid as penalties, MCG faces acute funds crunch now

GURUGRAM: MCG is reeling under acute financial crisis, having paid a hefty penalty of Rs 100
crore to the National Green Tribunal (NGT) as environmental compensation, Rs 2.8 crore for
non-compliance of norms at Bandhwari landfill site and Rs 19 crore to Ecogreen for Faridabad’s
waste management.
On the other hand, the MCG has, so far, not been able to generate much revenue, officials said.
The civic body has only collected Rs 150 crore as property tax and generated a revenue of Rs
15 crore, against the target of Rs 100 crore for the current fiscal, from advertisements to date.
For the property tax, the civic body’s target is around Rs 1,100 crore for the 2022-23 fiscal year.
MCG commissioner Mukesh Kumar Ahuja recently called a meeting of senior officials and
directed them to emphasise on generating revenue for the civic body. The commissioner
directed the officials to generate revenue from property tax, advertisements and development
charges, TOI has learnt.

“We have already paid over Rs 121 crore of fine for environmental compensation and for
Faridabad’s solid waste management. This amount excludes the expenditure we have done so
far on the services we are providing to residents,” a senior MCG official said.
“However, the revenue generation for the current fiscal has not picked up. A meeting was held
recently in which the commissioner had told officials to focus on generating revenue. The major
areas where the civic body can focus on to generate revenue is property tax, advertisements
and recovering development charges,” he said.
According to the officials, they had set a target of Rs 20 crore revenue from the development
charges of which only Rs 4 crore have been recovered so far. The officials also said that the
civic body also received Rs 202 crore from stamp duty arrears, however, the officials still have to
work to generate more revenue.
Amardeep Singh, additional commissioner-1, said, “The portal on which approvals had to be
taken was not functioning properly due to which it was delayed. However, now the portal is
working and we have received approvals for 19 sites, so the revenue from these 19 agencies
will now start coming in.”
“However, we generated an income of Rs 14 crore from advertisements last fiscal and this year,
we managed to earn Rs 15 crore in just four months from April to July,” he added.
The MCG commissioner did not respond to calls, despite repeated attempts.