City Mayor Malini Gaud here on Friday presented a deficit budget of Rs 99 crore for the Indore Municipal Corporation (IMC) for the financial year 2016-17. In the budget which happened to be the second budget of her tenure, the Mayor has proposed no new taxes; neither had she made any change in the existing property tax rates of the city. Against a proposed income of Rs 3,88501.75 crore, the budget proposes an expenses of Rs 3,89411.41 crore, thereby showing a deficit of Rs 9959.07 crore.
As has been proposed in the budget, a Mayor Special Development Cell will be constituted to complete special development project in the city within stipulated time period. In the first phase, the cell monitor development of gardens, beautification of Sirpur pond and other development works on day to day basis to becarried out at Dussehara Maidan, Vishram Bagh, Nehru stadium, Nehru Park, Kamla Nehru zoo, Gandhi Hall and Shekhar Nagar slum areas.
A sum of Rs 141.70 crore has been proposed in the budget to carry out survey for laying sewerage line in the newly added municipal areas of the city as well as to set up regional sewerage treatment plant. Additional fund has been allocated for the maintenance of heritage and buildings of historical importance like the historic Rajwada. Rotaries will be constructed at important squares of the city to improve traffic bottlenecks. As was enshrined in the budget, cleanliness campaign to be speeded up and 10 new electronic buses will be run in the city soon.
Mayor hailed municipal corporation initiatives to increase revenue of the municipal corporation from property taxes. She said as a result of initiatives taken by the corporation, there has been an increase of 37,000 new property tax payers in the city. Similarly, she said revenue of Rs 3.10 crore has been realized from penalty on property tax evasions. The Mayor said that efforts are underway for GPS mapping of the property in all 85 wards. With the completion of GPS mapping of property within the next 15 months, more than one lakh new property tax payers would be added to the city and it will greatly help the corporation to increase its revenue generation from property tax, she added.