MUMBAI: Thousands of industries in the Trans-Thane Creek (TTC) industrial belt suffered a legal setback on Wednesday after the Supreme Court ruled that the area falls within the jurisdiction of the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC), allowing the civic body to continue collecting property tax from industrial units.Setback for TTC industries as SC says NMMC can levy property taxDismissing a batch of appeals filed by industry associations, a bench of Justice Pankaj Mithal and Justice Prasanna Varale rejected claims that the TTC industrial area stood excluded from NMMC limits and that the civic body lacked the authority to impose property tax on units operating there.The associations had sought recognition of the belt as an independent industrial township, arguing that the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) already provides civic amenities such as roads, water supply and drainage. Since industries pay service charges to MIDC, they contended, NMMC could not impose a separate levy for similar facilities.A bench of Justice Pankaj Mithal and Justice Prasanna Varale disagreed. The court said the associations had misread a December 16, 1994 state government notification, which merely sought to avoid dual administrative control and did not specifically exclude TTC MIDC villages from NMMC’s jurisdiction.The court also dismissed the argument that industries were facing double taxation. It held that fees and service charges paid to MIDC are fundamentally different from taxes.“The tax is a compulsory extraction for the collection of revenue whereas fee is in the nature of a charge for the services rendered. The element of quid pro quo is an essential characteristic of a fee or a charge. Therefore, so long as the said element ex facie exists, the levy of fee or charges cannot be equated with tax,” the court clarified.The Supreme Court ultimately held that NMMC is authorised to levy and collect property tax from units and plot holders in the TTC industrial area even if they continue to pay fees to MIDC. The bench also noted that the entire MIDC area had been transferred to NMMC for maintenance of civic infrastructure from December 1, 2005.