The Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC), trying to shake off government pressure to impose water tax, has discovered a route to push it back till the Lok Sabha elections. The civic body, run by the Trinamul Congress-BJP combine, has announced that filtered water supplied without a meter will not be taxed.

The move, feels the Trinamul leadership, will delay the imposition of water tax and by the time the meters are installed, the Lok Sabha elections will be over.

Besides, collection of water tax based on a meter reading is a move supported by the state government. So, it cannot accuse the CMC board of disobeying a government policy decision.

Admitting that filtered water cannot be a free commodity and users must share the cost of producing it, mayoral council member Anup Chatterjee said: “However, the new water tax, imposed by the CMC on residential users, is discriminatory and unscientific. It should be replaced with a need-based, scientific metering system.” Chatterjee has been entrusted by the Trinamul leadership and mayor Subrata Mukherjee to formulate a better policy to replace the “discriminatory” water tax rate.

He likened the metering system to the power bill, where consumers will pay for filtered water, as they do for electricity, as per the readings on their meter. The rate may be Rs 5 or Rs 7 for a kilolitre. “But there are about 2.3 lakh residential connections in the 141 wards of the city and it is not possible to bring them all under the metering system overnight. The meters will be installed in a phased manner,” he said.

Water supply department engineers said meters imported from France for commercial users had been working well for about four years now. Installation of meters also hiked the annual income of the department from less than Rs 1 crore to about Rs 7 crore. Small meters for domestic users are also available from the French company, Schlumberger, and each costs about Rs 600, said the engineers.

Apart from mayoral council member (water supply) Sovan Chatterjee, all the other members in the council feel the water tax formula was drawn up to incite discontent in the non-Left votebank between Shyambazar and Tollygunge. They said the tax would burden 1.2 lakh house-owners in that belt.