Hyderabad: The Hyderabad High Court has made it clear that residents associations, housing societies and gated communities that receive water supply in bulk from the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB) and using its drainage lines to discharge sewerage cannot avoid paying sewerage cess.
Justice C. Praveen Kumar was dismissing a petition by the HMT Satavahana Nagar Welfare Association at Kukatpally seeking to declare as illegal and arbitrary the Water Board’s levying of sewerage cess in pursuance of a circular dated February 25, 2009. The court upheld the Water Board’s decision.
The association said that though water was being supplied in bulk through a six-inch pipe line, every individual house gets water through a 0.5 inch diameter pipeline. It said that since no individual water connection was taken by owners of houses from the Board, levying of sewerage cess was improper and incorrect.
The Board contended that it was no way connected with the internal arrangements being made by the residents of the colony but once water supply was made through a pipeline of more than 1 inch diameter and the Board’s drainage system being used, the petitioner was liable to pay sewerage cess, in the absence of any STP treatment plant.
The judge noted that there was dispute with regard to the association being provided a sewerage line by the Board and the counter affidavit of the Board clearly disclosed that the association was discharging all its sewer into STP maintained by the Board, and the same was transmitted to KS Main of the sewerage system of the Board.
Justice Kumar ruled that the argument of the petitioner that it need not pay the cess as its name was not included in the list of the housing societies like IDPL and others by the Board was unsustainable and directed the association to pay the cess.
