Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee?s convoy drives past garbage vats on Palm Avenue on Friday. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

Ten million people sans civic sense vs 12,000 sweepers. A clean, garbage-free Calcutta is a lost battle already, say civic officials.

The weak legal provision under the CMC Act 1980 and corrupt officials rallying behind the offenders only make matters worse.

According to Calcutta Municipal Corporation?s deputy director (conservancy) Siddhartha Mukherjee, a spot fine between Rs 20 and Rs 50 is all that can be slapped on a person committing nuisance in public.

For littering, the civic body can at most serve a notice on the offender and file a case in the municipal magistrate?s court. While in most cases the penalty realised has been not more than Rs 50, officials say the record fine to date has been Rs 2,500, charged from the owner of a petrol pump on Ashutosh Mukherjee Road, near Hazra Park, in 2002. The man was charged with dumping sludge on the road.

A conservancy official said that only two to three per cent of the 2,000-odd notices served every year on offenders conclude in legal proceedings at the municipal magistrate?s court.In most cases, government officials, mayoral council members, borough chairpersons and ward councillors exert pressure to free the guilty.

An official cites an example. In 1998, notices issued to eight divisional commissioners of Calcutta Police residing in Park Court, in the Park Circus area, for dumping garbage had to be withdrawn at the request of the civic top brass.

Besides the around 3,000 tonnes of garbage generated by the city every day, 700 tonnes of stray garbage litter the streets.

Except for a few posh areas, including Lake Road, Southern Avenue, Wood Street and Shakespeare Sarani, residents elsewhere are hardly aware of their responsibility, civic officials claimed. Most markets dump refuse on the roads after the conservancy staff clears garbage.

?The 10 million people in the city go on littering, while a band of 12,000 sweepers race against time to clean up. It is a lost battle,? said chief engineer conservancy Arun Sarkar.