CELLAR & BASEMENT PARKING: Hotel owners allege harassment from MCC

Mysuru: The Mysuru Hotel Owners’ Association has criticised the Mysuru City Corporation (MCC) for harassing owners of commercial buildings by directing them to reserve the basement for parking. A delegation of the Association met Chief Minister Siddharamaiah on Dec. 8 and submitted a memorandum appealing the CM to instruct the MCC not to harass businessmen.

The Association has told the CM that all these years the MCC collected taxes from the owners though the cellars were to be reserved for vehicle parking. The Association members said that no local body, including the Corporation, could collect tax for parking area in any commercial complex. The MCC move was taken arbitrarily without consulting the trade bodies and that was resulting in mental agony, the members said.

This system of mandatory basement parking is not in practice anywhere in Karnataka and the MCC is enforcing its own rules, harassing businessmen, they said. “The MCC has not issued Completion Report for buildings since four years. Now in the name of Completion Report, the MCC is collecting double the taxes,” the Association said.

President of the Association C. Narayana Gowda alleged that MCC officials had threatened owners of seizing their commercial buildings if they did not vacate the cellar and reserve it for parking. He said that the MCC had given licences for the basement and to conduct business there. It had also collected tax from the owners for several years, he said.

Traders were the highest taxpayers for the MCC and over 70% of revenue resources of MCC were from traders, Gowda said, adding that it was unethical to harass them for petty issues. Even government offices were being set up in the basement across the State, he said, and nowhere in the State, had local bodies asked owners of commercial complexes to reserve the cellar for parking.

There would have been justification if the MCC demanded big commercial complexes to reserve a portion of the basement for parking, he said, adding that the MCC was demanding small complexes of less than 1,000 sq. ft to reserve space for parking.