Amidst allegations of under-utilisation of the budget amount, it has now emerged that most of the money spent by the civic body this fiscal has been for carry over works from the previous two years.
Responding to charges by leader of opposition in the council Padmanabha Reddy that the budget implementation was as low as 5%, ruling party leader M. Shivaraju and Commissioner N. Manjunath Prasad, during the monthly council meeting on Thursday, said the implementation was 48.8%.
They said that the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) had, till date, spent a total of ₹4,952 crore this fiscal of the ₹10,133.87 crore budget.
However, Mr. Reddy stuck to his guns and argued that he stood by his allegation. He argued that the waiting list for pending bills was over 20 months and when that was the case, how could BBMP pay for works in the 2018-19 budget and listed a slew of proposals for which action plan is yet to be approved. He said most of the expenses BBMP has made this fiscal was for paying pending bills for works taken up under the previous two budgets and the civic body is yet to even start implementing proposals in the current budget.
The BBMP commissioner said that the State government had granted ₹7,300 crore for two years – 2016-17 and 2017-18 and an additional ₹2,491 crore for 2017-18, of which BBMP had spent ₹6,300 crore and was waiting for the third instalment. He said the money spent during this fiscal is accounted for under the current fiscal.
Mr. Prasad argued that any project will take at least eight months to get a work order. Hence, most projects will carry over into the next fiscal, indicating that most of the money spent during the current fiscal was for projects taken up during previous years.
Ward-wise works
Councillors cutting across party lines pointed out that ward-wise works of ₹465 crore were yet to be approved crippling development works on the ground.
Responding to this, Mr. Shivaraju listed out the total grants a few wards have cumulatively over three years, maintaining that there has been no political disparity in grants.