PARTICIPATORY BUDGET: Suggestions flood city's ward offices on last day of submission

Various citizens’ groups thronged the city’s ward offices on Saturday to file suggestions for the Pune Municipal Corporation’s (PMC) participatory budget as it was the last date for submission of the suggestions. The online suggestions for the participatory budget also crossed 1,100 mark on Saturday.

There was a huge rush at various ward offices on Friday and Saturday to submit their suggestions. Earlier, the deadline for filing the suggestions for the participatory budget was September 10, but dna’s campaign to create awareness about it resulted into a good response from the citizens’ groups. Looking at this, PMC commissioner Mahesh Pathak extended the deadline to file suggestions till September 21.

The citizens’ groups also came forward and gave suggestions in large numbers. Members of the Aundh Vikas Mandal seems to have succeeded in waking up people in its area as Aundh residents have taken the concept seriously.

Mandal’s member Girish Deshpande told dna, “We have managed to submit total 225 suggestions manually as well as online to PMC. We held meetings of residents and identified the problems and after setting the priorities of works we filed the suggestions.” The Aundh residents have suggested four common works, which include public toilets, bus stop refurbishment with display of bus stop names, bus routes with timings, footpaths and steel bollards on footpaths to prevent parking on footpaths.
There were a good number of forms from the Wanowrie ward.

Rajesh Choudhari of Wanowrie Residents Forum said, “We managed to submit 145 suggestions on Saturday. Earlier, we had held a meeting and we decided that all our members would suggest the same work to build up pressure on the civic administration to carry out that particular work.”