Two Left-run municipalities have waived the water tax for a large chunk of residents and several are planning to go the same way to try and match Mamata Banerjee, who has repeatedly asserted her opposition to such a levy.
After being trounced by the Trinamul Congress in the May civic polls, Left leaders in North 24-Parganas in have gone ahead and implemented the decision in two areas without waiting for government approval.
Kamarhati municipality will no longer send water bill to families with monthly income less than Rs 6,000 and North Dum Dum has offered the exemption to “all middle-class and lower-income families”.
“We have already taken a resolution to waive the water charges of financially weak sections. We will immediately implement the decision,” said Tamal De, the chairman of Kamarhati Municipality, on the northern fringes. North Dum Dum Municipality’s chairman Sunil Chakrabarty refused to clarify what he meant by “middle-class and lower-income families”. He defended the waiver saying “our chief minister had appealed” for it.
The state government’s policy is to tax all house owners for filtered water — the amount ranging from Rs 15 to Rs 70 a month depending on their property tax.
International funding agencies like the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have set imposition of the water tax as a precondition for disbursement of loans for development projects. Bengal will be denied thousands of crores of rupees if it refuses to collect the water tax as that will amount to a breach of contract.
Officially, about a third of the water tax-payers in Kamarhati will go out of the net with the relaxation, but officials said many more would avail themselves of the waiver taking advantage of the difficulties in determining the exact income of many families. In Dum Dum, the percentage of beneficiaries is bound to be much more given the lack of a definition of middle-class.
Municipal affairs minister Asok Bhattacharya said he was aware of the “pressure” the municipalities were under to withdraw the tax. “I heard that Left-run municipalities are waiving the tax. They must be facing a challenge from the populist idea of adjacent Trinamul-run municipalities, where there is no such tax. But, in principle, our government does not support this waiver,” he said.
The Trinamul policy is to not charge for water. Anjana Rakshit, the Trinamul chairperson of South Dum Dum Municipality, said: “It is a declared policy of our leader Mamata Banerjee.”
A Trinamul mayor had introduced the water tax in Calcutta in 2003, but Mamata had forced Subrata Mukherjee to withdraw it.
The demand for water-tax waiver has cropped up in several recent meetings of the heads of the Left-run civic bodies, said the municipal affairs minister. The municipal heads apparently warned of serious consequences in next year’s Assembly polls if the Trinamul-run civic bodies alone continued to offer the benefit.