All the individual setups, commercial entities including Government buildings are under the scanner of Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) as the Civic Body is planning to act sturdy on all those who have not yet constructed rain water conservation structures in their premises.
As the deadline for constructing the water conserving techniques ended a month ago, the municipal body that is compiling the figures have instructed Sparrow Softech Pvt. ltd., the agency roped in for holding tax collection, to conduct field verification of each household who have submitted the Self Assessment Forms (SAF). Conversely, the status of rain water harvesting at government buildings and commercial units covering vast carpet area will be demonstrated by the RMC officials soon.
Information suggests that within a day or two, the RMC will upload a declaration form for public convenience. Any individual who have adopted the technique will be able to share the details on the official website of the corporation. Besides filling up the detailed application form, tagging one photograph of rain water harvesting setup of a particular household has been made mandatory.
“Tax collectors are inspecting the houses that have submitted SAF. The civic body soon will start scrutinising the government buildings and other buildings those are spread over an area covering 20,000 sq. ft. of the total land. After getting the reports of defaulters, a letter will immediately sent to the respective addresses. Meanwhile, the concerned firm has also been instructed to click pictures of a house from three difficult angles for geo-tagging purpose,” said Naresh Kumar Sinha, PRO of RMC.
As many as 115 people of Sparrow Softech Pvt. ltd. are involved in verifying the SAF and other related documents. The field inspection by the Sparrow Softech team members that formally began on April 7 has covered 22,000 households. The company has received approximately 1.42 lakh SAF during the holding tax collection process and is yet to cover a large portion to assemble a composite testimony.
However, the representative of Sparrow Softech, Vishal Bhaskar who is leading the team in conducting survey has said that the situation this year is better as during the inspection it was found that quite a number of households have made the arrangement of rain water technique.
“Since more than 70 per cent households’ verification is pending, hence it is difficult to mention that what is the exact status of rain water harvesting structures in Ranchi. Most of the households covered under the verification procedure and have given the details of water harvesting have been found to be correct. We are expecting more encouraging results as gradually people are now becoming aware about its benefits,” added Bhaskar.
As per the records available with the Municipal Corporation, most households are yet to espouse the technique despite several repeated reminders. In the wake of severe water crisis, the civic body in 2016 made rain water harvesting technique mandatory.
Notably, from April 1, the defaulters will be charged 1.5 times the total holding tax as a fine amount. The municipal corporation had set a one-month deadline for all building owners covering 3228 sq. ft or more area to put in place mandatory water harvesting structures, failing to which the civic body would charge the penalty amount after the enforcement of new holding tax rates that came into effect from May 1, 2016.