You may have to pay a fine if you don’t segregate dry from wet waste before handing it over to the garbage collectors appointed by the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP).
The Karnataka High Court on Monday asked the BBMP and the State government to inform it before September 21 on the steps taken to appoint executive magistrates under the Code of Criminal procedure (Cr.PC) and Section 431 of the Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act for imposition of fines on households that fail to segregate garbage.
A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Vikramajit Sen and Justice B.V. Nagarathna suggested that powers of executive magistrates could be given to the health inspectors or environmental engineers and said that the provision to impose Rs.10 as fine may not be sufficient to prevent violation of segregation norms.
BBMP pulled up
Expressing displeasure over BBMP’s measures for effective disposal of garbage, the Bench orally chided the civic authority saying that it was only talking and no action was being taken.
It asked the BBMP to inform on the action taken for identifying three places in every ward for segregation of waste after collection from households.
The Hindu’s reportage
Earlier, government counsel and a petitioner who had filed a public interest litigation (PIL) petition complaining about the failure of BBMP to dispose of garbage, pointed out to the Bench the reports published in the September 10 edition of The Hindu about University of Agricultural Sciences-Bangalore’s effective models of generating biogas/electricity from garbage. Following this, the Bench briefly went through the reports.
Citizens’ duties
Meanwhile, the Bench also reminded the citizens about their fundamental duties as per Part IVA of the Constitution while pointing out that they are duty-bound to keep the environment clean.
