BENGALURU: Observing that the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike’s aim seems to be making Bengaluru the most dirtiest city, the Karnataka High Court on Friday imposed a cost of `50,000 on it for disobedience of its order. A division bench of Justice B S Patil and Justice B V Nagarathna also observed that the BBMP was going in the reverse direction in solid waste management when compared to other cities in the country.
The court was hearing a batch of petitions filed in 2012 seeking directives to the BBMP for proper management of solid waste in the city. Taking the civic body to task for not showing enough interest in addressing the issue of garbage, the court observed that every state in the country was giving priority to municipal solid waste management except Bengaluru. BBMP will see doomsday if the same situation continues, the court observed.
The court’s observation came as the BBMP Commissioner did not act on its directives issued on November 10, 2017. The court had directed the BBMP to prepare an action plan for solid waste management in wards through ward committees and submit the same to the court. The court also said that the Commissioner should have taken action against the members of the ward committees, including the elected representatives, if they failed to respond to the letters written by him asking them to submit an action plan.
Terming the lapses on the part of the Commissioner as a serious one, the court ordered him to take action against the officials concerned and the members of the ward committees, including the elected representatives, for not discharging their statutory duties. This was after the Commissioner submitted the report saying that 130 ward committees have not submitted the action taken report and 64 have furnished incomplete reports. Only four ward committees have submitted the report stating that they have not found a place for waste processing plants. There a 198 wards in BBMP. The court asked the Commissioner to file an affidavit on compliance of its directives on March 28 — the next date of the hearing.