Octroi, albatross around SCBs neck

HYDERABAD: The Secunderabad Cantonment Board (SCB) wants octroi and toll taxes to be abolished. It has a sent a proposal to this effect to the Director General of Defence Estates, Delhi, five times in the last two years but has received no response till date.The revenue from octroi and toll tax is about Rs 13 lakh per month while the SCB spends about Rs 20 lakh towards collection of the same.S Balakrishna, chief executive officer (CEO) of SCB told Express that there are 62 cantonments across the country and many of them had abolished octroi and some did away with the toll tax. According to him,  in states like Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, the respective governments take care of the taxes and pay up some amount to the cantonments every year. “The SCB administration cannot abolish the taxes as they are prime sources of income for the board,” he said.Malkajgiri MP Sarve Sathyanarayana said, “We have sent the proposals for abolishing the taxes not only to the defence officials but also to Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy because the state government has to take care of the taxes and give some amount to the board. We were told by the Director General of Defence Estates that they would abolish the taxes if the state government takes care of it and pays some amount to the board.”There were about 100 Cantonment Boards cross the country at the time of Independence. Subsequently, many were merged with the city corporations and at present, 62 are left. The SCB is the biggest among the Cantonments with 4 lakh population and 293 colonies under its jurisdiction. Only the SCB and Pune Cantonment Boards are collecting  octroi and about 10 cantonments are collecting toll taxes.