Heritage buildings in north Delhi may get a new lease of life, as an NDMC committee has "unanimously agreed" to exempt such properties from house tax, a move that seeks to incentivise owners of such buildings to keep and maintain them.
The House Tax Committee in its meeting held yesterday made the proposal, following which it will now go into the Standing Committee of the North Corporation for approval.
"It was agreed unanimously to keep heritage buildings and building of national and historic importance out of the ambit of property tax. Many people and tourists come to see these buildings and therefore they augment our national pride," Chairman, House Tax Committee, NDMC, Rajpal Rana said.
The Walled City, housing several havelis, bungalows and heritage buildings, falls in north Delhi and this move will provide a much-needed fillip to such properties, many of which are decaying for want of repair.
The area which includes the bustling Chandni Chowk is a big tourist attraction.
"Making heritage building tax-free has been a vision of our corporation for many years and deliberations have been made on the matter in the past.
"And, since, most of them are in agreement, we believe there should not be any problem in seeing this proposal becoming a policy. This will save many such buildings from being dismantled," Member, Heritage Committee of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, Vartika Sharma said.
The MCD last year had set the ball rolling to upgrade its list of heritage buildings, including age-old havelis, and was working out on incentives like house tax exemption so that owners don't view their property as an "economic burden".
While the MCD has been trifurcated into three municipal corporations -- NDMC, SDMC and EDMC, the Heritage Committee, constituted during the unified MCD period is still overseeing the heritage-related work taken up by the three civic bodies.
"As per our last list made around the trifurcation time in 2011-12, we had identified about 1500 buildings, the count previous to that being 700-800.
"Among the 1500 heritage structures, about 900 were havelis but, that count is unofficial and, therefore we had initiated the re-listing," Sharma said.
Old Delhi, Civil Lines, Kashmere Gate, Sadar Bazar, have a lot of havelis like Chunamal ki Haveli, Khazanchi ki Haveli, Namak Haram ki Haveli, the nearly 150-year-old Town Hall, Old St Stephens' building, State Bank of India, among other buildings.
The committee in its meet also proposed to incentivise NDMC staff and officials employed in collection of property tax, by offering a one per cent commission to the employees after meeting the collection target.
