High court allows BBMP to call tenders for garbage collection

The high court permitted the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to go ahead with the tender process concerning disposal of solid waste material but asked it not to finalise it without the court’s permission.

HT Jagadeesh and a few others have been carrying on disposal of solid waste material for the BBMP over several years. Each petitioner had availed loan ranging from Rs1 crore to `5 crore. Some of them own vehicles worth Rs2 crore to Rs2.5 crore.

According to the petitioners, a notification was issued on December 13, 2011, pertaining to disposal of solid waste material, which includes door-to-door collection, sweeping of roads, pavements, and vacant sites and collection of municipal solid waste from bulk generators. The notification was issued on a zonal basis.

However, the contract was related to various packages. Five notifications were issued on maintenance of select roads through mechanical sweeping in Bommanahalli Zone.

The petitioners challenged all the notifications. According to the tender notifications, a contract shall be awarded for three years with an additional rider that it should be continued for another three months.

The petitioners sought direction from the court to the BBMP to issue the notifications after seeking approval from the government.