Surat: Textile traders, who have shops in one of the oldest textile markets on Ring Road, are in the soup.

The lease of their shops on 24,435 square metres of land owned by Surat Municipal Corporation expired on April 28, and the civic body says it will be renewed only at current Jantri rates. This means the textile traders will have to shell out Rs127 crore to ensure that they don’t lose possession of the land and before that service charges of Rs1.27 crore also to start the procedure for renewable for another 50 years.

Municipal commissioner Banchhanidhi Pani said, “We were to meet committee members of Surat Textile Market Cooperative Shops and Warehousing Limited a few days ago. The meeting could not materialize, but we will try to meet this week definitely.”

The general board of the civic body had earlier passed a proposal for renewal of the lease under which shop owners in the textile markets needed to pay up at the Jantri rate of Rs52,250 per square metre for the land besides non-refundable service charges of Rs1.27 crore. The textile traders are not interested because earlier they paid just Rs2 per square metre of land for 50 years lease.

STMCSWL committee had in May itself had made it clear that the shop owners were not in a position to pay up the amount and wanted some concession on the grounds that the textile sector was facing recession.

However, BJP, which controls the civic body, is unwilling to give up SMC land at free of cost.

Aslam Cyclewala, Congress councillor, stresses on the need to recover money from the textile traders and also possession of the land.

This particular textile market, which was set up in 1968, has 1,025 textile shops and in another 75 there are banks, a post office, offices of chartered accountants, a nursing home and 70 warehouses.

Published On : 22-10-2019

Source : Times of India