PUNE: The Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) has decided to increase in the fine charged for regularising unauthorised water connections during its drive to increase water tax revenue and recover the cost of supplying water to residents.

The water supply department has started a drive to regularise these water connections. It has appealed to residents to contact the zonal offices concerned immediately to regularise their water connections before August 30 by paying Rs 1,500 as fine.

A statement issued by the PCMC said that the fine will be doubled to Rs 3,000 in order to regularise half-inch residential water connections from September 1 onwards. The fine for regularising residential and commercial connections of other sizes will also be doubled. The PCMC will charge four times the fine for regularising water connections from October 1 onwards. The time frame for availing of this opportunity will be announced later, the statement said.

The period for regularising the water connections by paying four times the fine will be less. The PCMC will take strict action against those with unauthorised water connections after the expiry of the period, which is to be fixed later, the statement said.

It may be noted that the water supply department conducted a survey of all the water connections in the municipal limits on July 26 and 27 to identify unauthorised water connections. The survey revealed that around 2,500 residential and 400 commercial connections were unauthorised.

NEW DELHI: The Centre on Wednesday warned states that have not implemented projects under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) satisfactorily would find it difficult to get financial assistance in future.

Urban development minister S Jaipal Reddy said that the Rs 1 lakh crore urban renewal mission had reached midway in its tenure of seven years and most of this money had been spent. But the implementation has to be effective. "We review the performances of states. Since most of the fund has been utilised, we will try to get an additional amount of Rs 5,000 crore from World Bank for JNNURM next year," Reddy said at a meeting of state urban development secretaries.

Calling for better cohesion among officials of urban civic bodies, the minister said this would go a long way in ensuring quality of projects under the mission. "For this purpose, we conduct a review of JNNURM projects on a periodic basis," he added.

Reddy said the Centre's focus is more on ensuring quality of work being done by urban civic bodies in various cities under JNNURM.

"Since December 2005 when JNNURM started, we have been giving funds to states for implementing projects under the mission. The difficult part of ensuring quality of projects and their effective implementation has now begun. For states that have not done enough, there will be no easy releasing of funds," the UD minister said.

Reddy said that with private vehicular traffic especially cars having increased manifold in metro cities, mainly Delhi, there is a need to think about pedestrians and cyclists.

"When the Delhi government implemented the BRT project, there was a lot of pressure from car owners as the corridor cramped their driving space. We need to withstand their pressure as in urban cities, there is hardly any scope for pedestrians and cyclists. Therefore, we are giving more buses to metro cities," the minister said.