13/10/2026
Pune Municipal Corporation PMC will impose additional property tax as a penalty on developers involved in illegal construction who have refused to pay the cost of demolishing their unauthorised structures, a senior official of PMC’s building permission department confirmed. PMC has been issuing notices to developers to repay demolition expenses but officials said only a handful have complied with payments while the majority have paid no attention to the notices. PMC bears significant costs during demolition drives including worker wages, earthmover and jaw cutter rental, fuel expenses and police protection fees with an estimated demolition charge of around Rs 1 lakh levied for a typical 1,000 square feet illegal construction. To recover these costs PMC will now impose additional tax on the developers’ other properties effectively using their existing real estate assets as a financial lever to ensure accountability for unauthorised construction.
Civic data shows that between 2020 and 2026 PMC’s building permission and enforcement departments issued 24,000 notices under the Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning MRTP Act against unauthorised structures across various zones, reflecting the massive scale of illegal construction that the civic body has been battling for years. The senior official said PMC will intensify action in the coming days and that developers will not be able to escape consequences for repeated violations. The additional property tax penalty mechanism is significant because it moves beyond the traditional notice-and-demolition cycle that developers have been able to ignore financially, directly targeting their revenue-generating properties and creating a real financial disincentive for future illegal construction. For a city where unauthorised structures have proliferated despite thousands of notices, the new penalty approach could mark a genuine shift in how PMC enforces building regulations against repeat offenders.
