VMC budget cleared

Vadodara: The general board meeting to discuss the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) budget ended late on Wednesday night. The civic body cleared the budget with a majority vote to ensure that the budget was cleared just before midnight.
The budget meeting was convened for two days and commenced on Tuesday morning. Most of the time of the meeting was spent on discussing civic issues in various parts of the city and little time on discussing budget provisions and other related items.

The opposition tried to corner the ruling BJP on various issues including the state government not providing funds under various heads as per the policy. VMC opposition leader Chandrakant Shrivastava said that the state government had given Rs 100 crore less to the city towards primary education.

Shrivastava added that the octroi grants being received by the civic body were much lower than that promised by the state government. He said that the shortfall over the years totalled to Rs 5,086crore. He added that the VMC used to make provisions for revenue from sale of land, but this never materialised in reality. He added that despite this, once again it has proposed to raise Rs 105crore from land sale in the 2019-2020 budget.

The Congress decided to oppose the budget and vote against it in the general board. Voting on the budget was began at around 11.30pm. With the BJP having a thumping majority, it expected that the budget would pass smoothly.