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By S.M. Ali. Jaffari
With the delay in the releasing of the GST share of the Sates by the Central Government the states are facing financial crunch. With the Lockdown of 45 days to contain the spread of Coronavirus Covid-19 the economic activity has come to a standstill incurring crores of rupees loss to the State Governments. The additional burden of providing special healthcare facilities for the cure of Covid-19 infected patients and running the quarantine camps.
In order to generate revenue the state governments has come up with the option of opening Arrack and wine shops to generate the much needed revenue to keep the show running in the extended Lockdown 3.0 which will go on till may 29. While allowing the sale of Alcohol to generate revenue is the easiest form of option before the government as major chunk of their revenue comes from the duties levied on the sale of alcohol.
Instead of opening of the sale of alcohol the State Governments should have opted for many other sources of tapping the much needed revenue. They could have opened the RTA offices with online time slots with some attractive schemes and waivers to attract people to get their vehicles registered, Licenses and get the documents right.
Opening of the Registration and Stamp Department offices with the online time slots for the Registration of Sale of Lands, houses and commercial properties can bring much needed revenue in the form of stamp duties fee and other charges/taxes following the Covid-19 guidelines.
The Government can also come up with the plan of opening up the Building Regulation Scheme (BRS) and Land Regulations Scheme (LRS) which has been stopped from a long period of time with a cut-0ff date. The GHMC will be flooded with lakhs of application and the State Government can generate the much needed revenue with online application process and payment modes. There are thousands of building which need to be regularized, by relaxing certain norms which in turn will generate property tax to the cash strapped GHMC.
They can also start giving online building permissions, boundary wall permission and permission for demolition of old structures by fixing online payment modes and if need by allocating time slots for the applicants for any further clarifications or enquiries.
Allowing the construction activity in the city limits with necessary covid-19 guidelines can ease the burden of the state Government of feeding the migrant workers to a large extent. can explore many such alternate options to generate revenue which can be easily managed following the Covid-19 guidelines and maintaining the social distance.
The opening of the Sale of Alcohol have brought many social evils which were well under control during the lockdown period. Domestic violence have increased a lot. The female fraternity feel they have been left to the vulnerable situation. Apart from this the nuisance of intoxicated persons will also be on a high note and will affect the police department which is already encumbered as front line warriors in the fight against corona virus Covid-19. (Press Media of India)
