www.expressindia.com - Weather | Horoscope | Stocks | RSS
expressindia web city
HomeBlogsCricketAstrologyShopping TendersClassifieds Opinions Jobs Hotels
Sign In / Register | Archive
Expressindia » Story

Water tax put on hold again

Font Size

Express news service

Posted: Apr 05, 2008 at 0042 hrs IST

Kolkata, April 4 The Kolkata Municipal Corporation, (KMC) has put on hold the imposition of the water tax scheme. Kolkatans were supposed to pay tax for water from the middle of May. But the imposition of the tax, in all probability, will not be introduced in the city before October.

The reason behind this delay is the civic body’s indecisiveness regarding the billing process. KMC is in a fix whether to bill the landlord or the tenant for supplying filtered municipal water.

The Assessment and Water Supply departments of the civic body are jointly preparing the bill that will be issued to the citizens. But, officers involved in preparing the bill have no idea if the bill will be in the name of the landlord or the tenants of a property.

“If KMC bills just the landlords, it will earn revenue of approximately Rs 5 crores. But, if it bills the landlords and the tenants, the revenue will be more than Rs 25 crores,” said a Senior Officer of the Water Supply Department.

“We are yet to decide if KMC will bill the landlord or the tenants. It will take some time for us to fix the matter. Hence, the implementation of the water tax system will take a longer time,” said Mayor, Bikash Ranjan Bhattcharya.

Apart from complexities in the billing process, delay in installing water meters has also affected the implementation of the scheme. KMC is supposed to supply water to 2, 68,000 households. Out of these, water meters have been installed only in 194 places. Most of these connections are in multistoried residential complexes located in Eastern and Southern part of the city like Meghamallar near Gariahat. A two-member team of the Water Supply Department collects the tax from these residential complexes.

On an average, the total amount of water supplied from the 19 boosting-pumping stations is about 270 million gallons. To serve a population of 45 lakhs, Kolkata needs a supply of 300 million gallons of water, per day.

It may be recalled that the KMC has failed to install water meters in the domestic households after facing opposition from the Trinamool Congress and the Forward Bloc.

Discuss this story on expressindia forums
Post Comments
Name* Email ID*
Subject* Country*
Message*
Characters remaining
 
TERMS OF USE: The views, opinions and comments posted are your, and are not endorsed by this website. You shall be solely responsible for the comment posted here. The website reserves the right to delete, reject, or otherwise remove any views, opinions and comments posted or part thereof. You shall ensure that the comment is not inflammatory, abusive, derogatory, defamatory &/or obscene, or contain pornographic matter and/or does not constitute hate mail, or violate privacy of any person (s) or breach confidentiality or otherwise is illegal, immoral or contrary to public policy. Nor should it contain anything infringing copyright &/or intellectual property rights of any person(s).
I agree to the terms of use.

Latest News

Business

Showbiz

Sports

'India's growing power makes it a global player'

SC refuses to interfere in Maya’s statue installing spree

'1,400 Tamils dying every week in Lankan refugee camps'

Some Urumqi mosques open for Friday prayers

Guj hooch tragedy: Death toll rises to more than 100

Nilekani leaves his identity at Infosys to give one to all Indians

Over Rs 14 cr missing in name of Naxal war in Jharkhand

More
© 2009 The Indian Express Limited. All rights reserved
The Indian Express Group | Advertise With Us | Privacy Policy | Feedback | Work With Us | Site Map