The Bidhannagar Municipality is going ahead with its plan to introduce service charge on water supply from the next month. In 2003, the residents had opposed a similar effort by the municipality, who moved court.
The tax had to be revoked.
This time, the municipality will consider the area of the residences as the basis on which the service charges will be levied on residential and commercial complexes.
This method of calculating water charges is a departure from the municipality's previous decision taken 10 days ago. It was suggested that charges be calculated on the basis of the quarterly property taxes paid by the owners.
For instance, it was decided that anybody paying upto Rs 500 per month as quarterly property tax will have to pay Rs 30 as water supply charge. For commercial complexes, it had been earlier decided that the charges will be imposed based on the ferrule size of the pipelines in the complex.
The municipality had set itself a revenue target of Rs 50 lakh in this financial year from water service charges.
The bills will be sent out every two months.
Source:The Indian Express,24-03-08
