The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has started assigning assessee numbers to ponds in the city so the civic body can identify an illegal construction proposed by filling them up.
KMC officials said if a pond is recorded with an assessee number in the civic body’s books, any proposal submitted to the KMC to erect a building by filling up the pond can be identified instantly.
Before issuing a building permit — based on a proposed building plan submitted by the plot owner — the KMC checks the assessment records of the plot of land where the building will come up. A simple check will throw up the information that a pond once existed where a new building has been proposed.
“Once we get to know that the piece of land where the new building has been proposed was a pond in our records, we will not issue a building permit. This will also help us know that a pond has been filled up,” said a KMC official.
Usually properties — vacant land and built structures — have assessee numbers. All property tax bills are prepared against an assessee number. At present, ponds do not have assessee numbers in the KMC’s records.
On Saturday, mayor Firhad Hakim told a news conference that 436 ponds have been found in Borough XV of the KMC, which covers Garden Reach and adjoining areas.
Hakim produced the number after the weekly phone-in programme Talk to Mayor. He had asked KMC officials to give him a list of ponds in Borough XV during last week’s Talk to Mayor after a caller complained that a pond had been filled up.
“We have found 436 ponds in Borough XV. These include privately owned ponds and those in public spaces,” Hakim said.
A senior KMC official said nearly half of these ponds have been assigned assessee numbers and the rest would be given numbers soon.
Earlier this month, a Calcutta High Court division bench came down on the KMC for failing to take action against illegal filling of water bodies and imposed a penalty of Rs 1 lakh on the civic body.
The bench headed by Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam said the KMC was “cheating the court”.
The chief justice said though the petition was last heard in November 2022, the KMC was yet to submit a list of water bodies in its area to the court.
The KMC had engaged Jadavpur University and a state government department to create a list of ponds across all the 144 wards of the city. An official said the list has been submitted to the civic body and they were now cross-checking it and assigning the assessee numbers.
The list shows a decline in the number of ponds in the city compared to the numbers two decades ago. “We will make the report public very soon,” Hakim said.