The Hindu : New Delhi News : MCD may attach BSES accounts

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Oct 19, 2007
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New Delhi

New Delhi

MCD may attach BSES accounts

Staff Reporter

If they fail to pay Rs.143 crore as power tax arrears by Monday

BSES (Rajdhani) owes Rs.94.83 crore
BSES (Yamuna) owes Rs.49.05 crore

NEW DELHI: The Municipal Corporation of Delhi has threatened BSES Rajdhani and BSES Yamuna with attaching their bank accounts if they fail to pay the civic body over Rs.143 crore as arrears in electricity tax by this coming Monday.

In a statement on Thursday, MCD Standing Committee Chairman Vijender Gupta said: “Rs.94.83 crore is recoverable from BSES (Rajdhani) and Rs.49.05 crore from BSES (Yamuna). These companies have been trying to circumvent the orders of the court and are coming up with illogical explanations.”

Mr. Gupta said the Capital’s other power distribution company, NDPL, was paying its electricity tax in time. If one discom was able to clear its dues on time, there was no reason why the others were unable to do so, he added.

Criticising BSES – which is owned by industrialist Anil Ambani -- for its failure to ensure smooth functioning of streetlights, Mr. Gupta said: “It was decided that the municipal councillors, officials and representatives of the respective firms would regularly undertake joint inspections to ensure the functionality of streetlights. It is regrettable that BSES official have taken little interest in proceedings leaving the entire system in a lurch.”

Other grievances voiced by Mr. Gupta include charging of commercial rates from MCD buildings like hospitals, community services, gardens and parks even though the civic body was a public utility institution.

‘Ironical’

“It is ironical that BSES wants to be treated as a public utility organisation so far as property tax is concerned, but it treats the MCD as a commercial organisation when it wants to extract bills from us,” he added.

However, a BSES spokesperson said his organisations (Yamuna and Rajdhani) “routinely deposits electricity tax and has paid over Rs.572 crore to the MCD since July 2002. Instead, it is the civic body that owes us over Rs.150 crore in electricity bills. Despite no recovery from the MCD for their various parks, buildings and other buildings, we have not undertaken any disconnection drive keeping public inconvenience in mind.”

The BSES spokesperson said the discom was in the process of chalking out a plan of action before the stipulated October 22 deadline.

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