Bengaluru: From January till June-end, the Bengaluru Water Supply and Sewerage Board has registered 435 cases of water theft. Of these, over 200 cases have been handed over the to the police for further action. These cases have been detected by two vigilance squads, set up by the BWSSB.
Mr Kemparamaiah, chief engineer, BWSSB, told Deccan Chronicle, “To save money, people resort to the cheap tactics of extracting water illegally from the supply line. Ever since the Unaccounted for Water project took off, most of the illegal connections have been curbed in the core areas. But on the outskirts, where Cauvery supply lines were laid only recently, people are stealing water. Water supplied to them doesn't have a meter and they have also installed pipelines to draw water illegally from our main lines.”
On the powers of special squads, he said, “Squads pay surprise visits to the 11 divisions and detect illegal connections. Apart from this, they also conduct raids based on complaints received on water theft and tipoff from the citizens. When our squads find any illegal or unauthorised water connections, we issue legal notices to violators. We are empowered under Section 108 of the
BWSSB Act, 1964 to file criminal cases against the guilty. After booking criminal cases, the guilty can either get connection regularised by paying the fine from the date the building was built or face action. The case is referred to the police station concerned, following which FIRs will be registered and action initiated.”
He said that in most cases, the guilty prefer to pay the fine and get their unauthorised connections regularised.
