The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : BMP to avoid additional post-budget resolutions

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Feb 21, 2005

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

BMP to avoid additional post-budget resolutions

By Afshan Yasmeen

BANGALORE, FEB. 20. Last year, the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP) faced a major embarrassment when the State Government rejected two of its post-budget decisions. This year, the civic body is desperately trying to ensure that there are no additional resolutions, post-budget.

The ruling Congress in the BMP had added two resolutions, one allocating Rs. 1 crore for each of the 100 wards for development works and another for providing a grade separator to each ward, in a jiffy to the BMP budget 2004-2005 on February 21 last year, when it was presented in the Council. But the Government had rejected the additional resolutions on the grounds that they were "impractical."

Allocation

"We do not want to have any kind of confusion or embarrassment this year. We are planning the budget in a systematic way to avoid additional post-budget resolutions. Efforts are on to allocate reasonable equal allocations to each of the 100 wards this time too," sources in the Standing Committee on Taxation and Finance, who are involved in finalising the budget estimates, told The Hindu on Sunday.

The Congress had approved over 75 additional resolutions to the budget in the last minute just before the BMP Council approved it.

The handwritten resolutions were tabled without the knowledge of the officials, including the Council section, which prepares the resolution list, and corporators from other parties.

Grant

Though the then Mayor, P.R. Ramesh, and his party members did their best to get the Rs. 1 crore grant for each ward approved, the Government later agreed only for an additional Rs. 25 lakhs per ward.

This is apart from the Rs. 45 lakhs allocated in the original budget estimates.

Till last year, there were different slabs for ward-wise grants. Wards that were newly added into the BMP limits got the lion's share. It was only from last year that the BMP decided to move away from the tradition and allocate equal grants to each ward. The sources said the "equal grants" norm will be followed this year too.

The Chairman of taxation and finance committee, M.K. Gunashekar, said the budget preparations are on at a fast pace.

"We are conducting department-wise review meetings. We will consult all the eight Standing Committees before presenting the budget in the second week of March," he said.

Infrastructure cess

Mr. Gunashekar said that the proposed infrastructure cess and solid waste management (SWM) cess will not be imposed simultaneously.

"It will be one of the two this year. The Karnataka Municipal Corporations (KMC) Act has been amended recently to enable the civic body to levy the cess. But we do not want to burden the citizens. One of the two will be imposed from this year but only after discussions and debate in the Council," he added.

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