Asansol Municipal Corporation Act, 1990

No: 31 Dated: Sep, 15 1993

THE ASANSOL MUNICIPAL CORPORATION ACT, 1990

West Bengal Act XXXI of 1990

    An Act to provide for better administration of the municipal affairs of Asansol by the establishment of a Municipal Corporation.

    Whereas it is expedient to provide for better administration of the municipal affairs of Asansol by the establishment of a Municipal Corporation;

    It is hereby enacted as follows:-

PART I

CHAPTER I

Preliminary

1. Short title and commencement. - (1) This Act may be called the Asansol Municipal Corporation Act, 1990.

(2) It shall come into force on such date as the State Government may, by notification, appoint.

2. Definitions. - In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires,-

(A1) "Asansol" means the area described in Schedule I;

(1) "Assessment Book" means the Municipal Assessment Book and includes any book subsidiary thereto;

(2) "budget-grant" means the total sum entered on the expenditure side of a budget estimate under a major head and adopted by the Corporation and includes any sum by which such budget-grant may be increased or reduced by transfer from one or the other head in accordance with the provisions of this Act and the regulations made thereunder;

(3) "building" means a house, out-house, stable, latrine, urinal, shed, part wall (other than a boundary wall) or any other structure, whether of masonry, bricks, mud, metal or other material, but does not include any portable shelter;

(4) "bustee" means an area containing land not less than seven hundred square metres in area occupied by or for the purposes of any collection of huts or other structures used or intended to be used for human habitation;

(5) "bye-law" means a bye-law made by the Corporation under this Act;

(6) "cart" means any cart, hackney or wheeled vehicle with or without spring which is not a carriage, and includes a hand cart, a cycle van and a push van, but does not include any wheeled vehicle which is propelled by mechanical power or its trailer;

(7) "carriage" means any wheeled vehicle with springs or other appliances acting as springs, which is ordinarily used for the conveyance of human beings, and includes a jinrickshaw, a cycle-rickshaw, a bicycle and a tricycle, but does not include a perambulator or other form of vehicle designed for the conveyance of small children;

(8) "casual vacancy" means a vacancy occuring otherwise than by efflux of time in the office of a Councillor * * * or in any other elective office;

(9) "Corporation" means the Asansol Municipal Corporation established under this Act;

(10) "dairy" includes any farm, cattle-shed, cow-house, milk-store, milk shop or other place-

(a) from which milk is supplied on or for sale, or

(b) in which milk is kept for purposes of sale or used for manufacture or preparation for sale of-

(i) butter, or

(ii) ghee, or

(iii) cheese, or

(iv) curds, or

(v) dried, sterilised, condensed or toned milk, but does not include-

(a) a shop or other place in which milk is sold for consumption on the premises only, or

(b) a shop or other place from which milk is sold or supplied in hermetically closed and unopened receptacles in the same original condition in which it was first received in such shop or other place;

(11) "dairyman" includes any occupier of a dairy, any cow-keeper who trades in milk, or any wholesale or retail seller of milk;

(12) "dangerous disease" means-

(a) cholera, plague, chicken-pox, tuberculosis, leprosy, enteric fever, cerebrospinal meningitis and diphtheria; and

(b) any other epidemic, endemic or infectious disease which the Chief Executive Officer may, by notification, declare to be a dangerous disease for the purposes of this Act;

(13) "Depot" means a place where articles are stored, whether for sale or for any other purpose but not for domestic consumption or use, in quantities exceeding two thousand kilograms;

(14) "domestic building" includes a dwelling house and any other masonry building which is neither a building of the warehouse class nor a public building as defined in this section nor a place exclusively used for private worship;

(15) "dewelling house" means a masonry building, constructed, used or adopted to be used wholly or principally for human habitation;

(16) "drain" includes a sewer, a house drain, a drain of any other description, a tunnel, a culvert, a ditch, a channel and any other device for carrying off sewage, offensive matter, polluted water, waste-water, rain water or sub-oil water;

(17)"edible oil" means coconut oil, cotton seed oil, groundnut oil, linseed oil, mahua oil, rapeseed oil, olive oil, poppy seed oil, safflower seed oil, taramira oil, til oil, Niger seed oil, soyabeen oil, maize (corn) oil, refined vegetable oil, almond oil, water melon seed oil, imported rapeseed oil, palm oil, palmolein, palm kernel oil, sunflower seed oil, rice bran oil or mustard oil, in pure state, imported sealed oil labelled as such, any vegetable oil, prepared by hardening process such as hydrogenation and labelled as such and bearing in the label in English and Bengali the names of the oils entering into its composition, or any other oil which the State Government may, by notification, declare to be an edible oil for the purposes of this Act;

(18) "edible fat" means ghee or vegetable fat like vanaspati, and includes beef fat or suet, mutton fat, goat fat, lard, cocoa butter or refined salseed fat;

(19) "entertainment" includes any exhibition, performance amusement, game or sport to which persons are ordinarily admitted on payment;

(20) "factory" means a factory as defined in the Factories Act, 1948;

(21) "filth" includes offensive matter and sewage;

(22) "goods" includes animals;

(23) "habitable room" means a room constructed or adapted for human habitation;

(23A)"holding" means land held under one title or agreement and surrounded by one set of boundaries :

Provided that where two or more adjoining holding form part and parcel of the site or premises of a dwelling house, manufactory, warehouse or place of trade or business, such holdings shall be deemed to be one holding for the purposes of this Act.

Explanation. - Holdings separated by a street or other means of communication shall be deemed to be adjoining holdings within the meaning of this clause;

(24) "house drain" means any drain of one or more premises used for the drainage of such premises;

(25) "house-gully" or "service passage" means a passage or strip of land constructed, set apart or utilised for the purpose of serving as or carrying a drain or affording access to a latrine, urinal, cesspool or other receptacle of filth or other polluted matter, by municipal employees or other persons employed in the cleansing thereof for the removal of such matter therefrom;

(25A) "household sector" includes-

(a) a rural household or urban household.

Explanation I. - "Rural household" shall mean a household within a rural area as defined in the West Bengal District Planning Committee Act, 1994.

Explanation II. - "Urban household" shall mean a household within an urban area as defined in the West Bengal District Planning Committee Act, 1994.

(b) a business undertaking, whether proprietorship or partnership, not being a body corporate as defined in the Companies Act, 1956, or

(c) a trust for a public purpose of a charitable nature within the meaning of the Charitable and Religious Trusts Act, 1920;

(26) "hut" means any building which is constructed principally of wood, bamboo, mud, leaves, pressed cloth or thatch, and includes any structure of whatever material it may be made, which the Corporation may declare to be a hut for the purposes of this Act;

(27)"infectious disease" or "communicable disease" means an illness due to a specific infectious agent or its toxic products capable of being directly or indirectly transmitted from man to man or from animal to animal or from environment (through air, dust, soil, water or food) to man or animal, and declared as such by the State Government by notification ;

(28) "inhabited room" means a room in which some person passes the night or which is used as a living room, and includes a room with respect to which there is a reasonable presumption (until the contrary is shown) that some person passes the night there or that it is used as a living room;

(29) "land" includes the benefits arising out of land, things attached to the earth or permanently fastened to anything attached to the earth and rights created by law over any street;

(30) "licensed architect", "licensed draughtsman", "licensed engineer", "licensed plumber", "licensed surveyor" or "licensed town planner" means respectively a person licensed under the provisions of this Act as an architect, draughtsman, engineer, plumber, surveyor or town planner;

(31) "market" includes any place where persons assemble for the sale of, or for the purpose of exposing for sale, meat, fish, fruits, vegetables, animals intended for human food or any other articles of human food whatsoever with or without the consent of the owner of such place notwithstanding that there may be no common regulation for the concourse of buyers and sellers and whether or not any control is exercised over the business of or the persons frequenting, the market by the owners of the place or by any other person declared and licensed by the Corporation as a market; "

(32) "member", in relation to the Corporation, means a Councillor , and includes a person nominated under clause (b) of sub-section (1) of section 5;

(33) "milk" means the secretion derived from complete milking of healthy milch animals, free from colostrum, and includes buffalo milk, cow milk, goat or sheep milk, mixed milk, standardised milk, recombined milk, toned milk, double toned milk, or skimmed milk, raw, pasteurised, boiled, flavoured, or sterilised;

(34) "municipal authority" means any of the municipal authorities specified in section 3;

(35) "municipal drain" means a drain vested in the Corporation;

(36) "municipal market" means a market vested in or managed by the Corporation;

(37) "municipal slaughter house" means a slaughter house vested in or managed by the Corporation;

(38) "municipal water works" means a water works vested in the Corporation;

(39) "notification" means a notification published in the Official Gazette',

(40) "nuisance" includes any act, omission, place, animal or thing which causes or is likely to cause injury, danger, annoyance or offence to the sense of sight, smell or hearing, or disturbance to rest or sleep, or which is or may be dangerous to life or injurious to health or property;

(41) "Occupier" includes-

(a) any person who, for the time being, is paying or is liable to pay to the owner the rent or any portion of the rent of the land or building in respect of which such rent is paid or is payable;

(b) an owner in occupation of, or otherwise using, his land or building;

(c) a rent-free tenant of any land or building;

(d) a licensee in occupation of any land or building; and

(e) any person who is liable to pay to the owner damages for the use and occupation of any land or building; and

(f) occupier of a factory as defined in clause (n) of section 2 of the Factories Act, 1948;

(42) "offensive matter" includes animal carcasses , kitchen or stable refuse, dung, dirt and putrid or putrefying substance other than sewage;

(43) "Official Gazette" means the Official Gazette of the State Government;

(44) "owner" includes a person who, for the time being, is receiving or is entitled to receive the rent of any land or building, whether on his own account or on account of himself and others or as an agent, trustee, guardian or receiver for any other person, or who should so receive the rent or be entitled to receive it, if the land or building or part thereof were let to a tenant, and also includes-

(a) the custodian of evacuee property in respect of evacuee property vested in him under the Administration of Evacuee Property Act, 1950;

(b) the General Manager of a railway and the head of the Government department, in respect of properties under their respective control;

(45) "premises" means any land or building or part of a building, and includes-

(a) the garden, ground and out-houses, if any, appertaining to a building or part of a building; and

(b) any fittings affixed to a building or part of a building for the more beneficial enjoyment thereof;

(46) "prescribed" means prescribed by rules made under this Act;

(47) "private street" means any street, which is not a public street, and includes any passage securing access to two or more places belonging to the same or different owners;

(48) "private market" means a market which is not a municipal market;

(49) "private slaughter house" means a slaughter house which is not a municipal slaughter house;

(50) "public building" means a masonry building constructed, used or adopted to be used-

(a) as a place of public worship or as a school, college or other place of instruction (not being a dwelling-house so used) or as a hospital, workhouse, public theatre, public cinema, public hall, public concert room, public ballroom, public lecture-room, public library or public exhibition room or as a public place of assembly, or

(b) for any other public purpose; or

(c) as a hotel, lodging house, home, refuge or shelter, where the building exceeds in cubical extent seven thousand cubic metres or has sleeping accommodation for more than one hundred persons;

(51) "public place" means any place which is open to the use and enjoyment of the public, whether it is actually used or enjoyed by the public or not;