The civic land and asset department officials, however, are ignorant about the loss. According to the records of the Year-Book (1987-88) of the KMC, the lease period of the premise no.6, Chowringhee Place — the site of Empire Theatre located at a stone’s throw from the head office of the KMC — was over on October 9, 2005. But, the civic body seemed completely unaware of it. “We have lost lease deed of many properties of the KMC. We have to review all the old deeds and make an estimate of how much revenue we are losing due to the loss of the lease deeds,” said Sahidul Islam, Joint Commissioner, land, KMC.

Other than the Empire theatre, the KMC has also lost the deed of Footnani Chambers at 6, Surendra Nath Banerjee Road, which is located just beside the KMC headquarters. The KMC’s address is 5, Surendra Nath Banerjee Road.

“Footnani Chambers is a very old building. There are thousands of lessees of that property. So without the lease deed, we cannot ask them for the renewal or cancellation of the lease,” said a department official.

According to the records, the property was leased out to the Hindusthan Cooperative Insurance Society Ltd. The lease period will be over on July 5, 2009.

“Our record preservation system is not very strong. Even if we come to know about any lease deeds, we are not able to find it. We are trying to make a report on how many assets the civic body has in the city,” said Islam.

“After searching we managed to find a 130-year-old lease deed of the Park Circus market. So, we hope that the other deeds are also there. But our officials need to be more alert about our assets,” added Islam.

The civic body has managed to trace a lease deed of South Club beside Woodburn Park in south Kolkata. According to old lease the club had been paying the KMC Rs 100 per month. But after the renewal of the lease, the KMC is getting Rs 1 lakh per month.

“We admit that we have lost several lease records followed by a huge loss of revenue. Our lands and assets have not yet been managed properly. We are reviewing the system so that we do not lose revenues due to the loss of records,” said Mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya.

Civic body bears the brunt of Wetlands hoarding tussle
The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) is suffering from huge revenue losses of around Rs 22-24 lakh a year as some of the hoardings by a private advertising agency in the East Kolkata Wetlands (EKW) triggered a huge controversy about whether the hoardings should remain or demolished.

Following the controversy, the civic authorities have also stopped seeking advertisement tax from the private agencies. There are around 17 hoardings in the wetland. Many of them are of Karukrit, a private advertising agency.

The civic authorities took the decision of not sending any demand notice to the private agencies after the East Kolkata Wetland Management Authority (EKWMA) issued a circular to the civic body mentioning that all hoardings from the wetlands have to be removed, as they were on the water bodies and are disturbing the ecological balance of the area. It also stated that birds are not coming to the wetland due to the huge hoardings.