Pics: Umesh Marpalli
Daijiworld Media Network-Udupi

Udupi, Feb 28: The general meeting of the City Municipality Council (CMC) was held at Sathyamurthy Auditorium, CMC, on Friday February 28.

The CMC called the meeting to discuss review of the tax on business permits.

“Business permit rate must be cut down but there is no precise response in the agenda. They must be clear about issues,” was a concern raised in the municipality meeting by T R Pai.

“The opposition party members supported this and worsened the situation. They wasted nearly 45 minutes of the meeting in a strike. As a result, Yuvaraj Puttur, municipality president, adjourned the meeting to next month. After that, speaking on this issue, they decided that the forthcoming manifesto had no issues of tax increment,” said Pramod Madhwaraj, MLA.

The City Municipality reviewed the tax in 1987. After that, City Municipality authorities were not reviewed so far. So, they raised the matter and asked for a permit on June 4, 2013. In accordance with meeting number 832, Karnataka State notice has been published regarding the issue on June 27, 2013.

A copy of this was published on the notice board to seek public opinion on July 1, 2014. But they did not get any objection from the public regarding the tax review. Now, they have decided as per the same base. According to this, now, the ruling party has accepted many objections also mentioned in the agenda as a result, argued the BJP members.

By shouting, “Access of tax is illegal and controversial to public interest”, they started protesting by showing their hoardings.

Overall, the meeting was a mixture of controversies and finally ended within one and a half hour.

Yuvaraj Puttur, president of City Municipality, Pramod Madhvaraj, MLA, vice-president, City Muncipality, and Shrikanth Rao K, Municipal Commissioner, were present.