HDMC commissioner to table civic body’s budget this year

Hubballi: The elections to the Hubballi-Dharwad Municipal Corporation (HDMC) Council having been deferred, the responsibility of drafting the civic body’s budget has fallen on the shoulders of its commissioner Suresh Itnal. The HDMC commissioner will have to seek administrative approval for the 2020-21 budget from the regional commissioner.
Itnal is expected to obtain the approval of the regional commissioner by the end of the first week of March. The residents of the twin cities are understandably not too enthused about the budget since the elected representatives are out of the picture.
However, this is not the first instance of the HDMC commissioner seeking approval to present the budget. Former mayor Pandurang Patil pointed out that, when elections were postponed, the commissioners obtained administrative approval to discharge routine tasks. “Once elections are held, and the council is formed, the party in power will table the budget again. So, one must not pin hopes on this budget,” Patil told TOI.
Ramanna Badiger was the chairman of the HDMC’s standing committee on taxation, finance and appeals had presented the budget last year.
HDMC officials said that the revenue target for the 2020-21 financial year was likely to be increased. “The target that was set last year was Rs 57 crore,” an official said. They pointed out that most proposals for which funds had been earmarked in the previous year’s budget had not been implemented. It is possible that the same proposals will be tabled in this year’s budget as well, sources added.
Sangeetha Rajshekharan, an expert in the field of finance, opined that the residents would do well not to expect much from this budget. “Since it is being tabled by the HDMC commissioner, the budget is unlikely to include major announcements,” she said.
Another financial expert Suresh Bhutta, who works at a capital market firm, said that the fiscal condition of HDMC was such that the commissioner would not be able to make allocations for new schemes. “The HDMC is cash-strapped, and is finding it very hard to ensure that the revenue and expenditure are balanced,” he said.
Itnal said that, a majority of the funds in the budget would be earmarked for the implementation of government schemes such as Vidya Sri, Arogya Raksha and development of villages within the purview of HDMC. “This time, we have set the target for property tax collection at Rs 80 crore. Although we were initially hoping to set the target at Rs 100 crore, we reduced it owing to a few technical reasons,” said the HDMC commissioner.