Consumer Wins Case Against Water Board for Unfair Trade Practices

HYDERABAD: A four-year-long struggle, including a court battle, with the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB) over a 1.4 lakh bill ended in a victory for Ravindranath Kolli this week.

It all began when Kolli and his family bought a house at Ameerpet in 2018 and discovered that of the two water connections to their home, one was illegal. When the water board announced its voluntary disclosure scheme (VDS) for regularisation of illegal water supply and sewerage connections in 2019, the family duly approached the board with all the details.

They waited for more than four months. "After about the fifth month, my father went around the offices asking for a status update but in vain. After almost 11 months, the board charged us a penalty and backdated it to three years and served a bill for almost Rs 1.39 lakh," Kolli told Deccan Chronicle.

Shocked, the family tried reasoning with the authorities but the effort proved futile. "One day, when I was away on work, eight HMWS&SB employees reached my house and threated my parents and left after issuing a 'warning'. I tried speaking to the people at the Khairatabad office and the billing office in our vicinity. The newspaper ad never said we'd be charged upon disclosure. They said that an advertisement about the VDS won't specify everything," he recalled.

Not wanting to make things worse for his parents, Kolli paid the bill of Rs 1,38,299 in November 2022.

His conscience pricked for not taking the wrongdoers to task and giving up. He filed a case in the consumer forum on January 17, 2023. The forum recently ruled in Kolli's favour and directed the water board to pay him a compensation of Rs 10,000 for unfair trade practices, deficient services and harassing the complainant and another Rs 10,000 towards his litigation fee.

The HMWS&SB would also have to refund the excess money after calculating the payable amount for regularisation of the second connection, within the next month and a half. Boosted by the order, Kolli hoped that many others would hold the authorities accountable if they had erred. "I've heard stories of many others being conned by the very same VDS scheme and hope this case will inspire them to fight it," Kolli shared.