Opposition members stage a walkout while civic chief expresses concern over decline in capital expenditure
Before the Rs37,052 crore civic budget was passed in the general body meeting late on Friday night, Opposition parties in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) staged a walkout. Meanwhile, Shiv Sena and BJP members seemed worried about completing the proposed projects within time for the February 2017 elections. Municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta also expressed his serious concern over the decline in capital expenditure, directly related to civic amenities.
With political parties wanting the civic body to include populist projects in budgetary provisions and complete all the pending works before civic elections, top boss Mehta looked like a worried man.
"For the last few years, revenue expenditure has increased manifold. In 2009-10, the expenditure was Rs8,793.70 crore. By 2014-15, it went up to Rs16,000 crore. This was, however, not the case with capital expenditure. In 2009-10, it was Rs5,089.87 crore, which declined to Rs5,071.33 crore by 2014-15," said Mehta in his statement.
At the end of discussion on budget in BMC, Mehta said the thrust was on time-bound completion of ongoing projects.
Stressing on the need to increase the capital expenditure, Mehta said establishment and revenue expenditure have instead been increasing. "For civic administration, increase in revenue expenditure in comparison to capital expenditure is not good in long term. This will have a negative impact on civic amenities and basic facilities provided by BMC. The civic administration needs to plan for the future and control revenue expenditure," said Mehta.
He added that a monthly budget meeting with all four additional municipal commissioners and 24 assistant municipal commissioners from all wards will be conducted to review expenditure. "This is to ensure that maximum funds allotted in the budget are utilised. Last year, only about 28 per cent of the budget funds were used. The status report of the work will be given to the general body after every three months," said Mehta.
Meanwhile, leader of Opposition Pravin Chedda, who led the walkout, said, "We oppose the budget because it is anti-common man."
Also, only 84 out of 232 corporators expressed their views and made suggestions during the budget session. The discussions were held for seven days and speeches delivered by corporators continued for total 49 hours, spread over those days. "It is very sad that corporators cannot even raise one or two issues to be included in the budget. It is high time that parties realise the need to train the corporators," said a senior leader.
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