BENGALURU: Bengaluru Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) has said that the High Court of Karnataka has dismissed a writ petition of Jain International Residential School and upheld a Rs 12-crore demand notice towards pro-rata water charges.
The issue dates back to 2004 when the school in Kanakapura taluk approached BWSSB for bulk water supply after finding its borewell water unfit for consumption. The government approved a request to supply 9 lakh litres of water per day. The school paid Rs 93 lakh to lay a pipeline and an agreement was signed on May 6, 2004. While water supply continued smoothly for years, problems started when BWSSB revised its water tariff. In 2016, BWSSB issued demand notices, asking the school to pay Rs 4.32 crore as pro-rata charges and another Rs 8.64 crore as additional pro-rata charges, bringing the total demand to over Rs 12 crore.
The school approached the HC seeking reliefs such as a declaration that it was not liable to pay the pro-rata charges, quashing of the February and April 2016 demand notices, and a refund of Rs 1.01 crore, which it claimed was collected as excess tariff prior to November 2014.
However, the court rejected the arguments of the petitioner. “The HC ruled that BWSSB is empowered to levy pro-rata charges under Section 16 of the BWSS Act. It noted that the 2004 agreement cannot override statutory provisions. The court clarified that even if BWSSB did not collect these charges earlier, it retains the legal right to levy them at a later stage.
The court pointed out that statutory rules only recognise two classifications for water supply -- ‘residential’ and ‘non-residential/commercial’. The court rejected the school’s defence and noted that the petitioner itself had described its premises as a “commercial complex”.