The chief minister made an order on Thursday to collect water tariff as per the unrevised rates after the Mizoram Pradesh Congress Committee leaders met him at his office, a day after the MNF set a deadline for rolling back the hiked water tariff.
“The sudden hike in water tariff appears to be a result of lack of technical know-how about the water metres,” the chief minister was quoted as saying in a Congress party statement on Thursday.
The chief minister’s clarification and order came a day after a government official statement said that the hike was “inevitable” as the government spent Rs 863 for providing 10000 litres of water to the consumers, and that the notification had been published in the Mizoram Gazette on September 23, 2011 and a bill was laid in the state assembly house in December, 2011.
“There was no mention of ‘technical snag’ in the official statement issued on Wednesday,” the MNF pointed out.
“If there was a ‘technical snag’ as claimed by the chief minister, why the engineers of the public health engineers did not notice it before preparing the bills?” it asked.
The MNF described the chief minister’s ‘technical snag’ as his desperate attempt to clean his party’s image as even the Congress supporters were shocked by the hike in water tariff, which was high as 600 per cent increase for some consumers.
The MNF president and former chief minister Zoramthanga on Wednesday set February 15 deadline for the Congress government to roll back the hiked water bills.
An official statement of EE, public health engineering (Aizawl water division) on Friday that consumers who had paid their water bills as per the new tariff will be refunded on production of receipts.