Mumbai civic budget to see 10 per cent steep hike

The civic body is likely to allocate huge funds to the Coastal Road and the Goregaon-Mulund Link Road projects this year. File Pic

The FY2019-20 budget for India's richest civic body will see a 10 per cent hike this year, and yet again, go beyond R30,000 crore. While the civic body is set to announce new policies and provisions in its 2019-20 budget today, Congress corporator Ashraf Azmi has already called it an unfair budget.

Azmi has written to municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta demanding that the position of Additional Municipal Commissioner (Projects) be filled immediately. The AMC (projects) is in charge of the civic body's finance and accounts departments, allocates funds to various heads, is responsible for planning and heading pre-budget review meetings.

In the AMC's absence, there are bound to be errors in the revenue and expenses of the civic body, Azmi claimed, as the meetings were not properly conducted and another AMC has been given an additional charge. "The appointment must be made at the earliest. This budget too is drafted by an officer who is not technically supposed to do this work. It will be unfair to the citizens," Azmi said.

A senior official of the BMC, however, said that the commissioner is the overall in charge of the BMC, and "as long as he is present, the AMC's absence is not going to cause any trouble or errors and there will be no injustice to the citizens."

Steep hike in BMC budget
Sources said that the hike in this budget is primarily attributed to the big-ticket projects, such as the Coastal Road with the under-sea tunnel digging likely to be initiated this year and the Goregaon-Mulund Link Road. Another department that will see higher fund allocation is the Development Plan, among several other new policy decisions.

The budget, which was inflated in FY2016-17, was cut down in FY2017-18 owing to the civic body's focus on completing ongoing projects instead of initiating new ones. The BMC's expenditure on most projects has, however, been standard at 30 to 40 per cent, despite the budget cut in 2017-18, claimed corporators. This year too, the BMC has so far (till December end) spent only around 37 per cent of R9,547 crore capital expenditures' budget estimated during the FY2018-19.

"Expenditure will go up as soon as we near March, with most bills coming to our accounts officers around this time," the senior civic official said. BMC Commissioner Ajoy Mehta was unavailable for comment.

Budgets of last three years
Rs 37,052 crore: FY2016-17
Rs 25,141 crore: FY2017-18
Rs 27,258 crore: FY2018-19

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