OFC cables: Plaint filed with Lokayukta cops

A complaint has been filed with the Lokayukta police against BBMP officials and corporators for their “failure to recover penalty” from private telecom and Internet service providers for laying optical fibre cable without obtaining permission.

According to complainants Jayakumar Hiremath Wg Cdr G B Atri, a committee, set up in September 2013 to look into the issue, had failed to submit the actual report.  The complainants have obtained the report under Right to Information (RTI) Act which stated that 4.90 lakh mts of OFC was laid without obtaining permission from the BBMP.

According to the complaint, the committee which comprised nine corporators as members was headed by the then mayor, Satyanarayana.

“The committee has observed that a total of Rs 30.91 crore was to be collected from the service providers. In a different RTI application, it was also revealed that the BBMP has issued notice to companies for laying of 2.53 lakh mts of OFC. The notice demanded Rs 21.98 crore from these companies as penalty. One of the prominent members of this committee, N R Ramesh had earlier made his own calculation stating that BBMP had suffered a loss of Rs 4,000 crore,”  G B Atri said.

The complainants stated that the committee had not conducted a proper survey of cables laid in the entire city without permission. The BBMP records also suggest that a penalty of only Rs 30 crore had been collected till now.

The BBMP had introduced the OFC policy almost 15 years after the telecom firms dug the City roads and choked the sewerage lines without paying a single penny, the complainants claimed. The complaint was filed to the in-charge Lokayukta SP (Urban).