Mayor Alok Sharma presented his maiden Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) Budget of Rs2,745 crore in the general council meet on Tuesday at the new BMC headquarters. Compared to last year, this Budget is of about Rs97 lakh deficit.
In a major relief to the city residents, the BMC has not imposed any new tax, while it would be for the first time in the country that a municipal corporation would open its own petrol pumps, where facility of submitting property tax would be made available. The BMC would open five petrol pumps in various parts of the city as per the provisions in the new Budget.
One more highlight of the new Budget is the provision that the Corporators’ discretionary fund has been reduced by Rs3 lakh. Earlier, it used to be Rs18 lakh, now onwards it would be Rs15 lakh, but the mayor has been provided with discretionary power of Rs15 crore through special Mayor Infrastructure Fund.
The general council meeting of the BMC on Tuesday remained stormy. The Budget of last year was Rs2,064 crore. This year, the role of the opposition remain limited as the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is having 59 Corporators while the opposition Congress has just 26 Corporators in the house of 85 members. In such condition, the majority is with the ruling party and the chairman of the house is also from the ruling party. So the ruling party was confident that whatever Budget would be prepared, it would get passed with very few alterations.
Earlier, as soon as the general council started the opposition Congress Corporators created ruckus over water supply and cleanliness issues. Mayor Alok Sharma time and again tried to pacify them by telling that way to solve both these problems would soon be find out, but the Congress Corporators remained adamant. Due to that finally, it was decided that a separate meeting would be called for water problem on April 16. After getting appropriate response from the mayor, the Congress members returned to their seats and the meeting over Budget started again and discussion over budgetary provisions started.
This time, the BMC has dreamt of making city smart, clean, heritage and digital and for this provisions of over Rs700 crore have been made in the Budget. The income of the BMC would be over Rs2,700 crore while the expenditure would be over Rs2,745 crore. loss would be over Rs97 crore.