The Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Budget has been postponed yet again. This time, the reason cited is a severe resource crunch.
The BBMP will urge the Government to grant additional funds to the tune of Rs. 1,500 crore to tide over the crisis, after which the budget will be presented in September, said Mayor S.K. Nataraj.
Speaking to presspersons here on Tuesday, he said that the BBMP was facing a severe revenue shortage, which was why the civic authority would request the Government to grant it more funds. “We will make a special request. We will meet Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa soon and request him to sanction more funds,” he said.
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He said that the BBMP would require additional grant from the Government to pay off part of its huge debt. He said that the BBMP had loans amounting to Rs. 2,600 crore from several banks and pending bills amounting to Rs. 1,600 crore.
“We are concentrating on improving revenue generation. In four months, we have been able to collect Rs. 735 crore through property tax. In another four months, we expect to collect another Rs. 400 crore,” said B.S. Sathyanarayana, Ruling Party Leader.
The BBMP is also banking on implementation of Akrama-Sakrama to increase the civic authority's revenue.
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Mr. Nataraj said that he was confident that Governor H.R. Bhardwaj would give his assent to the Bill.
About the Rs. 9 crore that was part of the 18 per cent scheme, which was transferred to the Social Welfare Department, he said that the BBMP would urge the department to transfer the money if it had not been utilised or give an account of the spending if it had.
Earlier, he gave away cheques to the beneficiaries belonging to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes from Jagjivan Ram Nagar. Mr. Nataraj said that the funds were given under the Safai Karmachari Rehabilitation Scheme. Under the scheme, the BBMP had identified 19,000 families and loans would be disbursed to them in stages.
The BBMP, on Tuesday, gave away Rs. 3.64 lakh as term loans and Rs. 2.4 lakh as grants to the 24 beneficiaries through the Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Development Corporation.