Mumbai: BMC spent Rs 13.59 crore on new revised Development Plan

A BMC official said the expenses would been have incurred anway. File Pic

The revision of the Development Plan (DP) proved to be a costly affair for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). It spent Rs 13.59 crore on a new revised DP, after the first was scrapped by chief minister Devendra Fadnavis in 2015.

The remuneration of special officers and hiring of manpower for the DP revision process also burnt a hole in the pockets of the civic body. And interestingly, the blue print of the city is yet to be finalised and published as the sanctioned DP 2034.

In a Right to Information (RTI) query reply to activist Anil Galgali, the BMC revealed that it had to spend Rs 13.59 crore for the revision of Development Plan 2034. The development plan drafted in 2015 had received severe criticism from all quarters.

While Rs 46.55 lakh was paid to Ramnath Jha for a period of three years, as he was the special officer on duty overseeing the preparation of the DP; former IAS officer Gautam Chatterjee, former chief engineer Sudhir Ghate and the former deputy director (planning) were paid around Rs 11 lakh for holding hearings, finalising objections, and suggestions from the public.

The BMC also had to spend Rs 1.26 crore for uploading the draft DP on its website, while it had to spend Rs 46 lakh on its printing. "Rs 3.35 crore was paid to an organisation for hiring technical experts, a planner and manpower. This is lavish spending and had the first plan been drafted well, then this huge amount of money belonging to tax payers might have been saved," said Galgali.

A senior civic official said, "The expenditure on uploading and printing of sheets and the experts' remuneration for the hearing process would anyway have been incurred, as it was part of the DP implementation and approval procedure."

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