No decision on fund utilisation extension, councillors worried
The civic commissioner Ajoy Mehta is likely to extend two more months time in the upcoming special group leaders meeting which is scheduled on Monday next week.
While, no concrete decision was taken in Thursday's Group Leaders meeting held. Also, according to civic sources if the meeting did not take place next week then possibly the funds would get lapsed as upcoming month is March which is the final year end month. Earlier the councillors belonging from the ruling party Shiv Sena and the opposition parties such as Congress, Samajwadi Party, and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) criticised the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) administration with no time left to utilise the annual budget money sanctioned to them. Therefore, all demanded two more months time collectively.
BMC corporators get Rs. 60 lakh each as fund, more from one crore rupees which is sanctioned as budgetary funds some money is given. In addition, if the corporator is a member of any committees like the standing committee, improvements committee, etc they get more Rs. 25 lakh and also some money they get from Mayor's fund which brings the total to Rs. two to three crores around received by corporator annually. They are supposed to utilise the sanctioned funds between the financial year April to March or otherwise, the budget gets lapse. therefore, if now the civic chief gives two more months time to the councillors they can utilise the funds up-till May 31, 2018.
Earlier, Rais Shaikh, the Group Leader of Samajwadi Party(SP) raised the issue in the civic general body meeting of January on defunct System Application Product (SAP) and how the process has delayed the corporators budget utilization. He said,"Due to defunct online SAP system of BMC, we are unable to get the bill of the work and thus the budget money is not being utilised on time, also two months time only left with all corporators to use all budget money, which is difficult."
The objection raised by Shaikh was also supported by Ravi Raja, the leader of opposition, and by the ruling party corporator Mangesh Satamkar.