This initiative lets you have a say in Palike budget

Non-profit organisation Janaagraha, with the support of the BBMP, launched the ‘My City My Budget’ initiative on Monday.

“We will gather inputs from citizens on where they would like to see the city budget allocated in their neighbourhoods. It will be undertaken through workshops for the stakeholders, including residents’ welfare associations,” Sapna Karim, head-civic participation, Janaagraha, told reporters.

The Budget Bus will go around the city for the next 60 days, covering 2,400 km and 250 locations.

Besides giving their suggestions, people can support budget requests submitted by fellow citizens, by voting for them at www.ichangemycity.com. All budget requests will be compiled and submitted to the government agencies concerned.

“After BBMP presents the budget for 2017-18, we will analyse the budget and map it against the requests submitted by citizens. We will convene ward meetings April 2017 onwards to undertake quarterly reviews of the budget and civic projects,” Sapna said. Janaagraha is organising a plenary in December for submission of citizens’ inputs and projects to the chief minister, mayor and civic agency heads.

“We collected 6,037 citizen inputs representing 74,371 citizens during last year’s campaign. This time, we want to reach more people. Inputs of 24% of the citizens were mapped in BBMP’s last budget,” she said.

Speaking on the occasion, Mayor G Padmavathi welcomed the initiative. “It is a good move and provides a platform to connect citizens and public representatives for better administration,” she said. BBMP commissioner Manjunath Prasad promised to set aside Rs 5 crore only to address the issues raised by citizens under this platform.  Citizens’ groups can reach out at [e-mail] to schedule workshops in their neighbourhoods. The BBMP commissioner said the BBMP’s new website, which will be ready in a month, would include data related to road history and collection of property tax.

“The website will have details of 19 lakh properties and road history, which are mapped through geographical information system, besides the amount of tax paid over the years. Provision is made in the website to seek permission to dig roads,” he said. Information related to burial grounds would also be uploaded.