Staff members of the municipality clean the drainage pipe in Chowk Bazar. Picture by Suman Tamang

Darjeeling, July 20: Tourists beware. The next time you are caught littering the hill town, you will not only have to pay a fine, but could also end up being booked under certain provisions of the Police Act.

The Darjeeling municipality, which has already devised a novel way of cleaning the hill town with the help of unemployed youths — working under the banner of the Himalayan Environment Awareness Programme (HEAP) — is planning to adopt stringent measures for the purpose.

Pranay Rai, councillor-in-charge, conservancy, said: “We adopted certain measures to ensure that Darjeeling is no longer an eyesore. We will approach the police department soon and request them to book offenders under Section 34 of the Police Act.”

Under this provision of the act, offenders will be let off only after paying a fine of Rs 40, said Rai, who is also a lawyer.

The civic body hopes that the fear of being booked under Section 34 could instil a sense of discipline among tourists and residents alike.

“We cannot start the campaign all at once. We will first start an awareness campaign in different parts of the town with the help of school and college students,” said Rai. The campaign is likely to start after the proposal is passed in the monthly meeting of the board.

“From the first week of August, we will put up trash cans across the town. We have already started working on this since we need to have the infrastructure ready before implementing the measures,” said Rai. The measures are likely to be introduced before the start of the next tourist season in October.

Trash cans will be placed in prominent tourist spots like Chowrastha, Nehru Road and the Raj Bhavan area by mid-August.

Once the infrastructure is in place, the civic board also plans to adopt the by-laws passed by the earlier civic body. The earlier board had also wanted to impose spot-fines up to Rs 25 for offenders littering the town with cigarette packets and tobacco sachets.

“We are currently looking into the by-laws, which might be adopted after the board goes through them,” said Rai.

The new civic body wants to ensure that cleaning of the town takes place on a regular basis.

“This morning, we cleaned up the main drainage pipe along the G-Building in Chowk Bazar. We will carry on from where the last board had left,” said Rai.

The previous board, led by Pasang Bhutia, had dismantled all vats and set up gardens in their places after introduction of door-to-door garbage collection. The gardens not only helped beautify the town, but also prevented encroachment on municipal areas.

The project was first initiated in Ward No 17 in collaboration with HEAP. Every household paid Re 1 each day to HEAP workers who collected the garbage and took it to the dumping grounds.

Of the estimated 30 metric tonnes of garbage that the town produces every day, around 24 to 25 metric tonnes are cleared by the civic body.