BWSSB to use PIDs to increase revenue

BANGALORE: Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) is planning to seek Property Identification Numbers (PID) from Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to increase its revenue by imposing tax on sewerage lines as well regularising unauthorised tap connections in the city.The BBMPs revenue has seen an upward trend by netting crores of rupees in its kitty, due to assigning unique (PID) numbers, a combination of ward, street and property numbers, which are used to identify properties (as many as 16,19,367 properties) through Geographical Information System (GIS).Speaking to Express, BWSSB Chairman Gaurav Gupta said, “The data will be useful in proper planning and development of water supply and sewerage network also. PIDs will be useful to find out the number of properties which have water and sanitary connections, on how and where such things have been provided and their purposes”.T Venkatraju, Engineer-in-chief of BWSSB, said “Once we get the data base, we will compare it with the data we have and will zero down the properties which have unauthorised water connections which are missed out in our list.”He said that the board has a data of about 6.3 lakh properties from which taxes are collected for sewerage disposals. “With this data, we will be able to increase our revenue by about Rs 10-20 crore, as we will get the list of properties with sanitary connections.”Gupta added that the list will help in giving new water connections too. “The properties which do not have a water connection, in the near future may seek a connection, we may need more pipes and other infrastructure. The data will help us execute such things easily”.The board will later formulate a policy on how to go ahead against the unauthorised tap connections.Meanwhile, G Manjunath Raju, former chairman of BBMP Standing Committee of Taxation and Finance said, “Since the PIDs have details such as water, sanitary, electrical connections,  nature of property-residential or commercial etc, they can be used as a platform for various applications. Even BWSSB can use it to increase its revenue.”