With discussions beginning in the next two days on the budget, the Council is all set to witness arguments and heated debates on whether the Palike will be able to implement the Rs 8,500-crore budget proposals.
The Opposition leader M Nagaraj of the Congress will initiate the discussions on Thursday. He said that the party members are planning to challenge expenditure proposed in the current budget.
“The budget presented this year is nearly 100.12 per cent higher than the previous year. Where will the BBMP mobilise the resources from,” questioned Nagaraj.
The Congress is likely to target the BBMP for banking heavily on the State government grants. “They have stated in the budget that the State government will provide them with grants upto Rs 1,300 crore. Is there a written promise by the government,” he asked.
Accumulated loans
He also questioned the revenue generation capacity of the BBMP to present such an ‘unrealistic’ budget. Nagaraj stated that the BBMP could never generate more than Rs 1,400 crore in revenue in a financial year. The BBMP will require Rs 300 crore only to pay salaries.
“But the largest chunk of money (Rs 700 crore) will go towards payment of interest towards the already availed loans from various financial institutions. Now, they want to raise another loan of Rs 1,800 crore from banks and other agencies. It is really unfair,” he lamented.
“The ruling party was never in the budget-preparation mode. It had to present a budget that could please the citizens since it was presented after a five-month delay,” he said.
JD(S) leader Padmanabha Reddy also stated that the BJP’s hope of financial institutions coming to its rescue was impractical.
“We already have a huge loan on our (BBMP) heads which will take at least 20 years to be cleared. They are now raising more loans to present this populist budget. This will take another 20 years to repay. Where is the BBMP heading” he questioned.
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