Hyderabad: Municipalities in Telangana state are, in violation of law, not paying water cess charges to the central government as per the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Cess Act.
The act states that urban local bodies should furnish details of the amount of water released in the area under them to the state Pollution Control Board, which calculates the amount of water cess to be paid based on the usage.
This amount is to be paid by the urban local bodies to the Centre, which gives back 80 per cent of the amount to the respective state Pollution Control Boards for developmental works.
An official of the Telangana State Pollution Control Board said, “For more than two yea-rs, none of the municipalities in Telangana state has paid water cess. We should have got around '7 crore in the form of water cess from the municipalities. We have written multiple times to the public health and municipal engineering department asking it to ensure that the urban local bodies furnish the details of water being used by them but there has been no response regarding that.”
The TSPCB is not exactly toothless and can take action on those who do not pay water cess. However, no action has been taken against the erring municipalities, the main reason being they are also government bodies.
The TSPCB official said, “Not just urban local bodies but the industries are also supposed to pay water cess. Industries can be made to pay by arm-twisting when it comes to granting them clearances but same is not applied when it comes to urban local bodies because they are government organiations.”
As per Water Cess act, the urban local bodies can be penalised with an amount equal to the amount of money which is pending to be paid by the ULB. Even the Centre can recover the amount from the ULBs the way it is done for revenue arrears as per the Revenue Recovery Act.
