Punjab Cong seeks review of licence fee on marriage palaces

"It will be virtually impossible for the palace owners to meet the exorbitant and unrealistic demands of licence fee and ultimately most of these might shut down," Punjab Congress General Secretary and Dhuri MLA Arvind Khanna said.

Khanna demanded that the fees be reduced and its payment spread out into instalments.

Giving examples he said, marriage palaces were supposed to deposit Rs 50 lakhs per acre in Ludhiana, Rs 40 lakhs in Jalandhar and Rs 10 lakhs per acre in Sangrur.

Khanna said on an average a marriage palace covers four acres, which means a marriage palace owner in Ludhiana will have to pay Rs 2 crores while in Sangrur the amount would be Rs 40 lakhs.

This might be not possible for most of the marriage palace owners, the Congress leader said.

Besides, he said, the marriage palaces cannot be governed by the same policy as applicable on the development of residential colonies and that the government must have a separate and rational policy regarding the same.

Khanna suggested that the government should take the marriage palace owners into confidence and arrive at some consensus to fix a fee which is mutually acceptable to all the parties.