Citizens corner BMP over violations, taxes

Citizens corner BMP over violations, taxes
The Times of India

Bangalore: Violation of building by-laws and deviation from building plan, should be made a cognisable offence. Only then can rampant violations a la Koramangala be curtailed, declared BMP commissioner K Jothiramalingam on Saturday.

Addressing the gathering at the annual PROOF (Public Record of Operations and Finance) initiated by Janaagraha, citizens raised dissenting voices against the BMP for allowing violations and sanctioning plans. In response, Jothiramalingam said, “Right now, there is no law making this an offence but we have recommended that water supply, sanitation and electricity connections should be refused if deviations are found.’’ To this end, the BMP would be introducing post-sanction building inspection from January 1, 2006, he informed.

The meet saw participation from citizens questioning the accountability of civic bodies be it in implementation of work promised or targets achieved in various budget parameters or transparency in revenue collection.

BMP additional commissioner (finance) P K Srihari, who made a comprehensive presentation on what tax-payers money was being used for, declared that the budget variance report was available for the public on any day and that the BMP’s quarterly results were comparable with that of any corporates.

Presentations were made by citizen’s groups of Mumbai and Kolkata on the municipal workings of the cities.

Some civic initiatives
l Composting and sanitary scientific landfill at Mavallipura which can handle 1 million tons of solid waste to be ready by first week of January
l Remodelling of storm water drains, a Rs 600 crore project, is on at the major valleys.
l Eight roads being done up on a fast-track basis, eleven severely damaged roads being repaired

Palmtop collection
The BMP is all set to introduce a hand-held palm-top for the annual exercise of property tax collection. With this, the assistant revenue officers or the tax inspectors would go d o o r- t o - door and issue computerised receipts to the owner. Whatever collection is done for a particular day, is later uplinked to the main computer which collates the revenue data. This is basically to eliminate manual intervention and lessen manipulation or pilferage of data. A computerised receipt is any day more authentic than a manually entered one.