Mysore/Mysuru: Aiming to bring over 35,000 illegal water connections into the tax- paying net, the Mysuru City Corporation (MCC) has floated an instalment scheme where house owners can pay only a part of the deposit amount and pay the rest in the monthly water bills.
The illegal water connections, especially in over 60 revenue layouts, slums and some of the thickly populated areas of the city is proving a headache to the MCC and despite many efforts, these residents continue to use the water supplied by the Vani Vilas Water Works (VVWW) every day without paying a single rupee.
“We have issued multiple reminders and notices but residents in these areas have been reluctant to pay deposit amount and install water meters. In order to tackle this issue and mitigate revenue losses, we have launched a new scheme allowing residents to pay deposit amount in instalments, which benefits economically disadvantaged individuals,” MCC Commissioner G. Lakshmikantha Reddy told Star of Mysore today.
As per the scheme, deposit amount for new water connections and meter installations has been fixed at Rs. 3,115. Residents can pay Rs. 1,115 during initial stage of deposit payment to regularise water connections. Remaining amount of Rs. 2,000 will be collected in easy instalments of Rs. 100 for 20 months, along with the water cess.
“We want to assist the poor and vulnerable individuals who may not be able to afford the deposit amount at one go. The MCC Council has approved the scheme and this will help increase MCC resources and address revenue losses,” Lakshmikantha Reddy said.
Once the deposit amount is paid, the new water meter will be installed so that the connection becomes legal.
“We are aiming to generate an additional revenue after all the illegal connections are regularised. The main issue we are facing in the revenue layouts is the confusion in the ownership of houses in the absence of records. We have decided to issue the water connection in the name of the owner after taking his/her Aadhaar cards,” the Commissioner added.
Non-working meters
For over 10 years, there were over 55,000 faulty and non-working meters and this was denting the MCC revenues up to Rs. 50 crore per year. Now, due to the initiative taken by the MCC, the cases of faulty meters have come down to 7,000 as the MCC imposed heavy penalties (up to three times) and the money used to double and treble as months passed.
“This has forced the residents to install proper water meters. We will also bring the remaining 7,000 consumers under the tax bracket to increase revenues,” he added.
Buying meters from scrap yards
Many residents avoid paying money to buy new water meters. Instead, they go to scrapyards to purchase faulty meters. This is contributing to the case of non-working meters. We are discussing the possibility of purchasing and supplying quality meters to such residences after charging them. A decision will be taken soon in this regard.” —Mayor Shivakumar
The maasive use of water are in the large houses, which are owned by nob-Mysoreans, very rich because of their illegally acquired wealth which they launder in Mysore. These large houses have gardens and have water sprinklers.Their houses do not appear in the MCC property database, because these rich owners bribe the MC and other officials not to keep the record of their properties. Who are these rich people? For example, in recent years, they are Keralites, who run the smuggled gold distribution business -the gold is currently smuggled into Kerala airports, by the Keralite businessmen resident in the UAE, who Modi met last year, and assured them of the UAE-Mysore non stop medium haul passenger jet service. They are building large houses and ware houses prior to expanding their gold smuggling business through Mysore Airport. Currently, the smuggled gold arrives through the Wayanad-Nanjangud road route. These Keralite crooks also operate Hawaala money scams. The Msore-Bangalore highway is their God-sent opportunity to distribute this gold and expand the Hawaala operations along the Mysore-Bangalore corridor. The Mercedes and Audi cars seen more and more in the highway are theirs.
They bribe every top officials in the MCC, the po lice, and some BJP ministers were in their pockets. The bribes used are in the form of gold ingots and USDs. No wonder, they pay no property tax, no water tax as their properti+es are not recorded any where!