Chennai: The Madras high court has stayed all further proceedings pursuant to the second amendment to the Tamil Nadu Municipal Laws, which took away the right of claiming exemption from payment of property tax, in respect of members of the All India Private Educational Institutions Association.
A division bench comprising Justices S.Manikumar and Subramonium Prasad granted the interim stay on a petition filed by All India Private Educational Institutions Association represented by its state general secretary K.Palaniyappan, which sought to declare as illegal, the Tamil Nadu Municipal Laws (Second Amendment Act 2018).
Petitioner’s counsel E.Vijay Anand submitted that section 10 (1) © of Chennai City Municipal Corporation Act, section 122 (1) of Madurai City Municipal Corporation Act, section 123 (1) © of Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation Act and section 83 (1) © of the Tamil Nadu District Municipalities Act were all provisions, which granted exemption to payment of property tax to educational institutions, was now being amended thereby the exemption granted was taken away by virtue of present impugned amendment Act 6 of 2018, thereby enabling only the government, municipality, local body running schools alone to get exemption.
The Tamil Nadu District Panchayats Act was amended with effect from August 6, 2009, empowering the panchayats to levy property tax over the educational institutions.
This amendment was challenged and this court has upheld the amendment to the effect that the government has power to cancel exemption granted to educational institutions. Aggrieved, SLP was filed in the Supreme Court.
Therefore, the larger question as to whether the educational institutions were entitled for exemption from property tax was pending before the Supreme Court.
When the matter has not reached finality, the authorities were in a hurry to levy property tax on all the educational institutions in the limits of Municipal corporations, which was illegal.
Many of the members of the petitioner association were issued with the demand notices calling upon them to pay the property tax, Vijay Anand added.
