LMC revised budget passed amid din
LUCKNOW: The Lucknow Municipal Corporation house meeting passed the revised budget on Monday by voice vote sans discussion, amid noisy scenes and heated exchanges between Bharatiya Janata Party and Samajwadi Party corporators.
The opposition corporators sat in the well of the house and shouted slogans, demanding discussion on the budget. Some corporators threw copies of the budget at the mayor’s chair and some others broke glasses.
At this, the BJP corporators also trooped into the well and started shouting slogans against the opposition members. However, senior corporator Ramesh Kapoor ‘Baba’ of the BJP intervened and persuaded the opposition corporators (led by leader of opposition in the LMC house Sayyed Yawar Hussain ‘Reshu’) to start the session. The opposition corporators were unhappy at the uneven allocation of ₹114 crore grant from the 14th finance commission . ‘Reshu’ alleged that the budget was not allocated to the wards of the opposition corporators and no one discussed the utilization of the budget with the opposition corporators.
The BJP corporators said that
the decision to spend the 14th finance commission money was taken by a committee headed by the divisional commissioner and this tradition had been followed since the times of the BSP and Samajwadi Party governments .
Angry with the claims of profit budget of ₹37.39 crore, Congress corporator Girish Mishra asked if the LMC was running in profit, then why were there liabilities of over ₹350 crore on it. “The truth is that the LMC is not able to pay contractors and so they are not ready to work. The development work is suffering,” he said. He said employees were not getting salaries on time and the condition of contractual works was worse.
REVISED BUDGET OF JAL SANSTHAN PASSED
The revised Jal Sansthan budget of ₹317.01 crore was also passed by the LMC house on Monday. Jal Sansthan will repair its ruptured lines with a budget of ₹23.05 crore.
HIKE IN NULLAH CLEANING BUDGET QUESTIONED
Sayyed Yawar Hussain ‘Reshu’ said the LMC had doubled the nullah cleaning budget from ₹5 crore to ₹10 crore without even asking the corporators. He said there was a big scam in nullah
cleaning work and if the budget was doubled, then nullahs should be cleaned twice a year.
ENGINEER WARNED
Mayor Sanyukta Bhatia warned environment engineer Pankaj Bhushan as he was not able to answer the question about purchase of equipment for cleaning the city. He was also not able to produce any receipt of equipments purchased by him for ₹10 lakh. Mayor Sanyukta Bhatia directed the municipal commissioner to conduct an inquiry into the matter and table the report on next meeting of LMC session on December1.