Deccan Herald                 19.07.2013

This year, BBMP budget to be ‘realistic’

Drawing lessons from the blunders in the past,
the Bruhat Bangalore Mahangara Palike (BBMP) is preparing a ‘realistic
budget’ this year.

Following the State government nod to
Mayor D Venkatesh Murthy to present the budget, the BBMP machinery has
started working day and night to prepare the budget. However, the
officials dealing with budget preparation have been strictly told that
the budget should be a realistic one this year unlike previous years.

For
the last five years, the BBMP has been presenting highly inflated
budget showing a very rosy picture of Bangalore. In the budget, it
always expected huge revenue from various sources and earnest desire to
undertake many ambitious projects, mainly those related to
infrastructure. In the last five years, it presented budget somewhere
between Rs 7,000 crore and Rs 10,000 crore.

The size of the budget last year was Rs 9,998 crore
but, according to the Palike sources, the implementation is hardly 35
per cent.

This year the Mayor and the BBMP commissioner M
Lakshminarayana are learnt to have directed the Palike officials to
prepare a realistic budget between Rs 5,000 crore and Rs 5,500 crore.
The budget should not make wild assumptions about the revenue as had
happened in the previous years where about Rs 700 crore was expected
from the private telecom companies. The Palike budget planners had
expected huge revenue from the optical fibre cables, laid by the telecom
companies. Similar expectations were made from the advertisement companies, that have put up illegal hoardings.

Sources
added that the thrust of the budget this year will be on infrastructure
projects. To top all the infrastructure projects would be
implementation of the five signal-free corridors. The Palike will also
take up widening of some roads.

Budget on Monday?

The
mayor has directed the officials to prepare the budget to be presented
on July 20, Saturday. But the officials involved in preparing the
budget, have sought two more days’ time. They have requested Mayor and
the Commissioner to present the budget on July 22.

“We doubt that
we will be able to prepare the budget, prepare speech copy, get it
translated into English and then get everything printed by July 20,”
said a Palike officer.