Budget lacks vision, say citizens and activists

Activists and citizens slammed the BBMP’s budget saying that it lacks a vision. A few, however, welcomed certain elements like the allocation towards education.

Srinivas Alavilli, co-founder of Citizens for Bengaluru, said: “The allocation to wards is abysmally low! Many wards collect Rs 10 to 20 crore tax per year and yet they get Rs 3 crore allocated to them! Several wards do not even have a proper ward office to conduct ward committee meetings and there is no allocation for this important asset.”

He said the money allocated to the lakes was extremely disappointing. “Each ward should make its own budget using the ward committees and that didn’t happen this year. We are left with small amounts for wards while white elephant projects like white-topping get a thousand crore rupees!”

Mukund from Citizen Action Forum said: “The BBMP budget lacks innovation and no importance has been given to accountability, governance and professionalism. No focus on recruiting staff. Internal auditing has not been taken up for years now. They should do that first.”

An activist from Mahadevapura, Sonali Singh said: “Nothing exciting in the budget. Around 50% goes to road, white-topping and waste management. There is only a little left to resolve current issues. Further, we need the accountability of allocation and expenditure, these are just numbers on paper. For example, there was a similar allocation for solid waste management in 2017-2018. We didn’t see any progress. Everything was on paper.”

The residents in the eastern part supported MLC Rizwan Arshad’s request to the mayor for creating a reserve fund of at least of Rs 250 crore for the comprehensive development of IT corridors of Mahadevapura.

“We thank him for it. But this amount has to evolve as Rs 250 crore is too small for the IT corridor. Bellandur’s recent proposal to the mayor to get the civic works completed itself will need Rs 269 crore,” said an activist from Save Bellandur.