The Municipal Corporation of Delhi has passed a new resolution to provide discretionary funds ranging from Rs.1 crore to Rs.3 crore to various members of its deliberative wing.
The resolution was approved as a budgetary amendment during a meeting of the Standing Committee on Wednesday.
As per the resolution, the Leader of the MCD House would be allocated a sum of Rs.3 crore while the Leader of Opposition would be allocated Rs.1 crore under the category of “discretionary fund” in the new fiscal.
In addition, the chairperson of MCD Education Committee has also been sanctioned Rs.2 crore while the chairpersons of the Garden Committee, Health Committee and Department of Environment Management Services Committee will henceforth be given a sum of Rs.1 crore each towards their discretionary fund. The Standing Committee has also decided to increase the allocation for the chairpersons of all ward committees across the 12 zones from Rs.25 lakh to Rs.50 lakh.
According to the civic body, such funds towards this select category of councillors have been sanctioned for the first time since the MCD was constituted and the amount would be allocated from the MCD’s non-Plan expenditure head.
Standing Committee chairman Ram Kishal Singhal said: “There had been a long-standing demand to allocate more funds to certain select members in the deliberative wing holding important posts. After these members approached us recently on the matter again we decided to implement this step.”
“These members will now have the funds at their disposal to help councillors who face problems in carrying out development work in their areas considering that massive development work is on in several wards for the upcoming Commonwealth Games. Moreover, we felt that there was a need to make provisions for utilisation of funds in times of emergency,” he added.
