Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh government has decided to impose tax on street-lighting. It will soon become a part of the property tax notice. The proposal has been cleared by chief minister Chandrababu Naidu and the residents of 13 districts of the state will be paying Rs 50 to 100 per year based on the total amount of the owner's property tax.
The decision follows the massive losses power utilities have been incurring. In the 2014-15 fiscal, the power utilities supplied 313.12 million units for lighting up the streets of Andhra which drew a bill of Rs 1.71 billion, an amount against which they got a mere Rs 54.6 million as payment from the users. Around 35million people of the total 48 million population would now pay street-light tax. Orders to the effect will be issued soon and collection of the tax as part of property tax will start from July 2015.
In municipalities and corporations, the money spent by the state in providing street-lighting is already being extracted from the consumers. "There are various taxes in urban areas like advertisement tax, entertainment tax, shop licence fee, etc. From the money collected under these heads, we pay the power utilities for the bill raised by them for providing street-lighting," said an official in the municipal administration department.
Gram panchayats were paying the power utilities for street-lighting since long, but in 1987 the then chief minister NT Rama Rao issued an order exempting local bodies from paying for street-lighting. To make up for this, successive state governments started deducting the amount given by the Centre under devolution of funds meant for local bodies and diverting the same to the power utilities. But a problem arose when the Centre stopped releasing funds for local bodies on the grounds that elections were not being held. "For the last two years, we did not get any funds from the Centre as we have delayed holding elections to the local bodies. The Centre does not release funds unless the election process is followed as per the schedule. Till date, the amount meant for the local bodies withheld by the Centre amounts to Rs 17.74 billion," said an official from the finance department.
