Observing that the contractors providing solid waste disposal services in the city are preventing the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) awarding the contract to new bidders, the Karnataka High Court on Friday dismissed all petitions filed by the existing contractors questioning norms prescribed in the new tender process.
Justice Mohan Shantanagoudar, while throwing out the petitions filed by A.L. Satish Kumar and others, said the court saw through their ploy and that they persistently approached it on some pretext or the other though their three-year contract had expired on March 14, 2010. It observed that the BBMP had cancelled the new tender process thrice before initiating the present process last year.
Waste disposal
Commenting that if waste was not disposed of effectively every day, there were chances of outbreak of diseases like malaria and dengue, the court said that none of the norms prescribed in the new tender process could be termed as against public interest.
Improvement charges
A Division Bench of the High Court on Friday stayed for 30 days the a single judge bench’s direction to refund the improvement charges already collected by the BBMP at the time of giving ‘khatas’ to properties in the newly added areas to the city.
A single judge bench in its April 20 order had declared as illegal the differential rates of improvement charges for properties based on their dimension. It had also held that BBMP cannot insist on single instalment.
The Division Bench said the BBMP should provide details like new rate of improvement charges and number of payment instalments within 30 days.
