Meghalaya is known for a number of illegalities, toll/check gates being one of many such improprieties. Illegal toll gates means that the collection is not accruing to the Council’s coffers. That the District Councils which are a creation of the Sixth Schedule with the express purpose of empowering the tribes and their institutions should now stoop so low just to fill up private coffers is distasteful to the extreme. There has been a war of words between the National Peoples’ Party (NPP) and the United Democratic Party (UDP) on this issue for a while now. According to the Sixth Schedule, the District Councils for an autonomous district shall have the power to levy and collect all or any of the following taxes, namely (1) taxes on professions, trades, callings and employments (2) taxes on animals, vehicles and boats (3) taxes on entry of goods into a market for sale therein and tolls on passengers and goods carried in ferries (4) taxes for the maintenance of schools, dispensaries or roads.
Evidently the Councils were mandated to collect the above taxes and to use the proceeds thereof for the purposes underlined above. The ADCs in Meghalaya fell short on many of their mandated responsibilities. They failed to run the primary schools and after a wide protest by teachers who were not paid their salaries for months and years, the State Government took over that responsibility in 1988. The Councils also don’t run dispensaries which could have incurred expenditures that they needed to raise from tax collections. The Councils don’t maintain roads which are the brief of the State Government. So how are the Councils really using the revenue generated from the various taxes except to pay salaries to their ever growing numbers of employees many of whom are political appointees.
Since the ADCs have been defaulting in the maintenance of their revenue and expenditure accounts as pointed out by the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) in their reports repeatedly, there is no knowing as to how much revenue is generated from royalties via extraction of limestone, boulders, sand etc. The legal extraction of coal has been banned since 2014, hence revenue collection by the State Government has gone underground and into personal coffers. This is the danger of a shadow economy that is not reflected in any books of accounts. While collection of tolls on good entering and leaving the jurisdiction of the Councils is legitimate it can only be so if such collections are reflected in their books of accounts, which does not seem to be the case here. Election to the ADCs is fast approaching and money is the driving force here. Illegal collection of toll means the money is going to the Party heading the Councils today. That perhaps is the key to the ongoing quarrel between the UDP and NPP.
