An emergency meeting of the City Corporation council convened here on Saturday witnessed heated debates over the revision of People’s Plan projects for the coming financial year and over the reconstitution of existing working groups. The Opposition councillors criticised the ruling party over the continued negligence showed towards them.
The meeting, the second one to be convened in a week’s time, discussed only one agenda.
It suggested the revision or scrapping of People’s Plan projects from 2013-14 and addition of new ones.
The working groups were also to be reconstituted for the years 2014-15 and 2015-16.
The Opposition councillors, of the UDF and BJP, alleged that the agenda and the detailed list of project revision and scrapping were supplied to them only after the meeting started.
The opposition members said that a huge share of the plan funds went to wards governed by the ruling party councillors.
“There are wards which got even Rs. 50 lakh of allocation. Some of the wards under opposition councillors did not even get a fraction of that,” said A. Mujeeb Rahman of Ambalathara.
The ruling CPI (M) said that fund division was done equally among all wards.
“We have divided the plan fund equally among all wards. We have scrapped only those projects which we found were not feasible. The funds from these have been pooled into other essential projects,” said Chairperson of the Works Standing Committee V.S. Padmakumar.
The allocation of Rs. 15 crore from the plan fund for land acquisition cases as per a court order also led to criticism from the opposition.
Mayor K. Chandrika said that the Corporation had no other way, but to comply with the court order.
“The funds were for the acquisition of seven separate land holdings. The case was defended by the Government pleader, not the Corporation’s legal team. We have to honour the ruling to prevent recovery of the Corporation’s properties,” she said.
