‘Rs 15 crore rent due to CCP from 400 shops in market complex’

PANAJI: The Corporation of the City of Panaji (CCP) continues to get no rent from over 400 shops at the Panaji municipal market complex, even as sopo fees are collected daily from vendors.

Former mayor Surendra Furtado said around Rs 15 crore due to the corporation in rent, is yet to be recovered and that the CCP has failed to take steps to do so.

He demanded that the chief secretary appoint a top bureaucrat to look into the matter, and alleged that there was a “mafia in the legal cell that is falsely advising the commissioner”.

Public interest litigations (PIL) filed in the high court of Bombay at Goa have also come to naught Furtado said, adding that the court, in July last year, had given the corporation one year to recover rent/licence fee arrears and initiate action against illegal occupants. “The CCP hasn’t taken any action to resolve the issue,” he told reporters on Friday.

When asked about the proactive steps he took as mayor to resolve the issue, Furtado said, “I always fought the mafia. I couldn’t file a PIL, so I asked friends to file it,” he said.

The N D Agarwal committee appointed by the government, in its report in 2013, had stated that 80% of the occupants of the market complex were illegal. A majority of occupants in the new market did not figure in the CCP’s list of tenants of the old market, it had stated.

Commissioner Ajit Roy said all cases regarding the market complex were being looked after by the estate officer, who is now the additional collector of north Goa. The market complex, he said, has come up on a piece of land 60% of which is owned by the CCP and the rest by the directorate of health. “The CCP will have to sign a tripartite agreement with the directorate of health and the GSIDC, which constructed the complex, where the directorate of health will have to hand over its area to the CCP on a long-term lease,” he said, adding that trade agreements will be signed with the occupants only after the tripartite agreement is completed, following which they will be able to collect rent.