Chennai Corporation gears up for another status-quo budget

CHENNAI:For the second consecutive year, the city Corporation’s budget is expected to largely maintain status quo in the absence of a council, while focusing on lowering the deficit. City Corporation Commissioner D Karthikeyan told Express that a ‘regular’ budget had been passed and would be made available to the public shortly.

“The focus is going to be on infrastructure and we’ve tried out best to keep the deficit low,” he said. Last year, a deficit budget of Rs 102.56 crore was passed.While the Corporation did not revise property tax rates last year even with the High Court rapping the civic body for not revising the tax rates since 1998, it remains to be seen if the rates would be revised this year. Recently, the State government withdrew property tax exemptions granted to private educational institutions.

“While health and education sectors must have ideally received attention in the Corporation budget, no major allocations have been made in these departments for the last seven years. While schemes eating up a chunk of the Corporation’s funds, like the Amma Unavagam scheme, are still running, the burden will be on the residents, when it comes to lowering the deficit,” said former Mayor M Subramanian.  

After the term of council ended in October last year, civic body polls have been delayed, resulting in the Corporation Commissioner passing the budget for the second year without a council in place. The last-year budget saw an increase in allocation of funds towards construction of bus route and interior roads. While Rs 236 crore was allocated for this purpose in 2016-17, this year it was increased by 35 per cent (666.52 crore). Stormwater drains also received an increased spending in the last year’s budget.