BMC plans to pump in Rs 600 crore for roads, bridges, water drains

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) administration has proposed to transfer Rs 600 crore from its emergency infrastructure requirement fund to boost the three civic departments - roads, bridges, and stormwater drains. The BMC administration has proposed to transfer Rs 600 crore from its emergency infrastructure requirement fund to boost the three civic departments.. This will help meet expenses toward infrastructure work planned for the financial year 2021-22. This comes as the budgetary allocation for these three departments for 2021 is almost exhausted, and more funds are required to carry on development work. The proposal to transfer additional funds to these three departments will be tabled before the BMC standing committee meeting this week. The civic administration has utilised 97.7% of the funds allocated to the roads and traffic department in budget 2021, utilised 83.2% of funds allotted to the bridges department, and utilised 96.4% of the funds allotted to the Storm Water Drains department. Of the Rs 600 crore in the emergency fund, Rs200 crore will be given to each of the three departments respectively. The roads and traffic department was allotted Rs 1,178.14 crore in the BMC budget 2021, of which Rs1,152.76 crore has been utilised, and 25.38 crore is left; of the Rs 444.93 crore allotted to the bridges department, Rs 370.33 crore has been utilised and Rs 74.6 crore is left over; and of the Rs 505.14 crore allotted to the Storm Water Drains department, Rs 487.36 has been utilised, and Rs 17.78 crore is left. The decision to use funds from the emergency infrastructure requirement has been met with a mixed response from corporators in the BMC. Asif Zakaria, Congress corporator from Bandra said, “There is a lot of pending infrastructure work across these three departments and if additional funds are needed to complete them, they have to be disbursed. But evidently, the administration did not plan the expenses of these departments efficiently, and allot the realistically required amount during the Budget 2021 itself. What will happen now if we are faced with an infrastructure emergency?” Prabhakar Shinde, BJP corporator said, “We want some clarifications about this proposal. First, how many projects where budgetary allocation is utilised have actually been completed? Second, if they had projects targeted for this fiscal year, estimated cost for each project and then made a demand during the budget, then why did the cost increase through the year? We will demand answers to these questions during the committee meeting.” Image Source