Bengaluru Authority's Waste Penalties Dubbed 'Extortion' by Residents and Opposition Leaders

BENGALURU: A day after the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) announced penalties ranging from Rs 19,200 to 1.28 lakh to be levied on vacant site owners who let their premises turn into a garbage black spot, residents, site owners and opposition leaders have flayed the move and dubbed the initiative as “extortion”. While the GBA will start penalising such plot owners from August 15 as part of the ‘Freedom from Waste’ campaign, Bengaluru Navanirmana Party (BNP), opposition BJP and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and a few residential welfare associations have termed the move as “harassment”. BNP founder Srikanth Narasimhan said the GBA should first implement collection systems. AAP leader Ashok Mruthyunjaya said this move was an “unwanted burden” and if owners approach the court, the GBA will face embarrassment. Former ruling party leader in the erstwhile Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagaar Palike (BBMP), Padmanabha Reddy, termed the move as anti-people. “The exercise by the GBA is pure extortion by the government. The GBA and the state administration have hit an absolute rock bottom with this draconian, anti-citizen policy. For decades, regular taxpayers have watched Bengaluru transform into a garbage zone entirely due to systemic failure, corruption and absolute incompetence of the municipal corporation. Yet, instead of fixing their broken waste management system, tracking down commercial dumpers, or maintaining basic public hygiene, the government has chosen to terrorise and penalise honest, hard-working landowners,” said Mruthyunjaya, demanding a rollback of these extortionist fines, double taxation rules and land-grabbing clauses. Highlighting the government collecting “registration charges, property taxes, user charges on garbage and cess”, Padmanabha Reddy said the government has only one intention, and that is to take money from Bengalureans through one or the other schemes.