Ex-servicemen fume as LMC seeks retrospective tax | Lucknow News

Lucknow: About 2,000 residents of Sarojininagar Sainik Sahkari Awas Samiti Limited, a cooperative housing society dominated by ex-servicemen and senior citizens, are facing the threat of sealing and attachment of their properties by the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC) over a long-running dispute on house tax. This is despite repeated public assurances by the mayor and intervention by the local MLA that retrospective recovery is illegal.The controversy centres on LMC raising house tax demands retrospectively from 2010 without year-wise assessment, reasoned orders, or an opportunity for a hearing. Residents allege that municipal staff are now threatening attachment of movable and immovable properties, calling it harassment of veterans and senior citizens.The situation escalated on Dec 21 last year when LMC published a list of “major defaulters” in newspapers, warning of seizure and sealing of properties if dues were not paid. Residents say their decades-old society received no municipal services, with roads, streetlights, and water pipelines built and maintained at their own cost, yet they are being asked to pay backdated house tax for over a decade.Residents said the first intimation regarding house tax came only in June 2024, when bills demanding tax from 2010 to 2024–25 were suddenly issued. At the annual general meeting held on Dec 28, the society unanimously passed a resolution terming the recovery illegal. Chartered accountant and resident CA Srinivas Saini said the dispute was being misconstrued as tax evasion. “We are not refusing to pay tax. We are only insisting that it be levied in a lawful manner,” he said. Retired Lt Col AK Saxena, father of Kargil girl and former helicopter pilot Gunjan Saxena, said the move was distressing for ex-servicemen. “Despite assurances that backdated tax is wrong, we are now being threatened with sealing of our homes.” The issue was also taken up politically after Sarojininagar MLA Rajeshwar Singh wrote to the Chief Minister, pointing out that the colony was developed in the early 1950s and that no municipal infrastructure work was ever carried out there. Earlier, in Nov, mayor Sushma Kharakwal stated that retrospective revision of house tax was wrong and that any reassessment should be effective only from 2022. She also constituted a committee to examine complaints related to GIS-based reassessment.