HC seeks garbage cess details of last 10 years

 The High Court on Friday directed the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to furnish statistics of garbage cess collection over the last ten years. This followed a submission by the Palike that it was spending 70 per cent more money than it collected as cess. 

Counsel for the Palike submitted before the Court: “If the cess collected is Rs 100 crore, we are spending Rs 350 crore to clear garbage from the City.”

Hearing a batch of petitions challenging the new tender notification issued by the BBMP for the collection and transport of municipal waste, the Division Bench comprising Justices N Kumar and B V Nagarathna directed the BBMP to give details on the cess collected from the public for collecting and transporting garbage.

During the hearing, when the BBMP submitted that 50 per cent of the garbage clearance is done by pourakarmikas and the remaining is done through the garbage contractors, the Bench sought statistics regarding the salary paid to the pourakarmikas for clearing garbage for the past ten years and how much was paid to contractors.

Earlier, the court also sought to know the criteria on which reservation had been made for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the tender notification.

"Reservation in employment and education is all right. The Constitution permits it as they are socially backward but what is the criteria in giving them reservation in this.

People who bid in a tender process are not poor or economically backward. Why is this discrimination here,” the Bench asked.

BBMP Commissioner Siddaiah was present before the court. The BBMP garbage contractors had moved the High Court challenging the new garbage tender process.

Seeking to quash the tender process, they had contended that the conditions of tender was changed on the last date on September 26, 2012, when the last date was September 29, 2012, so that they would not be able to participate in it.