Pune Municipal Corporation budget today; hope high for no hike in taxes

PUNE: Civic administrator Vikram Kumar is set to table the draft budget for the financial year 2023-2024 in the municipal corporation on Friday. Citizens expect funds to be allocated to boost public amenities and for development work.
Civic activist Vivek Velankar said that the budget should focus on the completion of pending infrastructure projects besides ensuring adequate allocation of funds for daily works such as managing garbage disposal and providing better services to citizens. "The administration should also present the details of revenue generation and spending incurred in the last 11 months," he said.
Residents from the merged areas said that allocation for newly attached areas should go up in the upcoming budget. "There is a significant difference in terms of quality of public services offered in old areas of the city and newly-merged areas. This disparity should be reduced," Velankar added.
Politicians and residents, meanwhile, added that they did not expect any additional tax on citizens as the state government has recently decided to re-introduce 40% tax discount for self-occupied properties.
"We are expecting the administration to improve its property tax collection to meet the shortfall. Many properties are still out of tax ambit which has hampered the revenue collection," a BJP leader said.
This will be the second consecutive time the administrator will table the civic budget since the Pune Municipal Corporation's general body was dissolved in March 2022. In the last financial year, the municipal commissioner had presented a budget of Rs 8,592 crore. Sources from the administration said they were not expecting a huge difference for 2023-24 as recommendations from elected representatives will not feature in this budget too since there is no general body yet.
The budget was set to be presented earlier this year but it was delayed due to the G-20 meetings in January and Kasba Peth bypoll elections in February.