Mumbai: Mayor Vishwanath Mahadeshwar directs BMC to extend deadline for councillors to utilise their funds

Mumbai: The councillors cut across party lines to criticise the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) administration as they have only two months to utilise the annual budget funds sanctioned to them.  Mayor Vishwanath Mahadeshwar has directed the administration to extend it by two months.

Rais Shaikh, the Group Leader of Samajwadi Party (SP) raised the issue in the civic general body meeting on Friday on defunct System Application Product (SAP) and how the process has delayed the corporators budget utilisation. 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.”

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Supporting the issue raised by Shaikh, Ravi Raja, the leader of opposition of Congress, said councillors are representatives of public and if the ward development work is not done then questions will be raised. “We all representatives have to face ward people daily and as the development work are lagging which are unable to answer them. Also, people don’t understand the fault of administration and eventually the finger is raised on councilors, hence, atleast six months time should be extended for budget money utilisation to undertake all work properly,” added Raja.

Shiv Sena corporator Mangesh Satamkar also pointed out the issue to the Standing Committee meeting in November. Speaking on the same issue again in the civic general body meeting, Satamkar said that due to the administration’s negligence on defunct SAP online process and also due to the recent implementation of Good and Service Tax (GST), councillors were suffering due to this confusion. In addition, he stated that if the BMC was unable to give six months atleast 2 months should be given.

BMC corporators get Rs 60 lakh each as fund, another Rs one crore is sanctioned as budgetary funds. In addition, if the corporators is a member of any committee they get Rs. 25 lakh more and also some money they get from Mayor’s fund which brings the total to Rs. 2 to 3 crores annually. They are supposed to utilise the funds between the financial year April to March.