The Hindu                       13.02.2013

CMC presents surplus budget

Parks to be developed with 1.20 cr.

Proposing a surplus budget for 2013-14 fiscal – the last year of the current term -- the Cuttack Municipal Corporation (CMC) on Tuesday allocated a whopping Rs 1.20 crore to be spent in the city this year for developing parks.

The CMC financial committee proposed a budget estimating a receipt of Rs. 245.69 crore with an opening balance of Rs 3.82 crore. It also proposed to spend in the ensuing fiscal Rs. 245.52 crore leaving a surplus of around Rs. 4 crore.

While the opposition corporators preferred to remain silent, some ruling BJD corporators, however, criticised the budget saying the surplus was only shown in pen and paper and the budget was ‘unrealistic’ keeping in mind that this was the last budget of the current term of the Council. Most shocking in the budget proposals of the civic body was that it remains silent on urban poverty alleviation and employment generation. Similarly, the developmental works, particularly on conveniences like drains, roads and streetlights have not got due allocations despite the fact these are in a very bad shape.

“We are going to address the shortcomings on these aspects by our ambitious JICA project,” Mayor S.K. Ghosh said. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is going to finance a sanitation project in the city with an estimated cost of Rs. 757.44 crore.

But the project which was inaugurated two years after its announcement in November last year, is still in limbo. Similarly, the budgetary provisions in key sectors like health, sanitation, mosquito control, and medical services are not encouraging as the financial committee has proposed to spend a little over Rs. 10 crore on these sectors.