SCB members call on DDE

Secunderabad: The Secunderabad Cantonment Board (SCB) members called on Sanjeev Kumar, Director, Directorate Defence Estates (DDE), Ministry of Defence, Southern Command at Pune on Tuesday.

The SCB vice president Rama Krishna speaking from Pune, said that the long pending issues including new building bylaws, building regularisation scheme, admission in Kendriya Vidyalaya for SCB staff, reclassify certain ‘B4’ and ‘B3’ lands to ‘C’ category and to accommodate social functions and other important activities which will generate local revenue to the Cantonment came up for discussion.

He further added that the SCB building bylaws were more than 80 years old and not suitable for the modern urban needs and the locals of the Cantonment Board have demanded to revise this bylaw. It was revised in 2017 and the petition was sent to the higher authorities and till date, no action has been taken.

Another contentious issue was building regularization scheme and building penalization scheme. The SCB has been strapped for funds and the board members submitted a request for the clearance of Rs 466 crore that are due.

After the introduction, GST, SCB stopped collecting the Octroi from July 2017. A total amount of Rs 4 cr was collected as Octroi in the year 2016-17 and no compensation was given to the Cantonment Board. The next issue was that under the Swachh Bharat programme, the board has done various works and a lot more work needs to be done and to maintain these works they need a huge amount.

The members also requested for the reclassification of certain ‘B4’ and ‘B3’ lands to the ‘C’ category and to accommodate the social functions and other important activities which would generate revenue to the Cantonment.