Chandigarh civic body staring at major financial crisis - Hindustan Times
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Chandigarh civic body staring at major financial crisis

Hindustan Times, Chandigarh | By
Dec 12, 2017 03:55 PM IST

The civic body spends Rs 60 crore every month on paying salaries and implementing various works.

Chandigarh Once cash-rich, the Chandigarh municipal corporation is heading towards a major financial crisis and may not be able to pay salaries to its employees and carry out development works in final two months of this fiscal.

(HT File)
(HT File)

With Rs 125 crore left in a fixed deposit and only Rs 10 crore being generated per month through its own sources of income, the MC faces exhaustion of all its funds by January-end.

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The civic body spends Rs 60 crore every month on paying salaries and implementing various works.

A senior MC accounts officer, requesting anonymity, said: “We only get Rs 319 crore as grant-in-aid from the Centre. While Rs 250 crore have been spent, the final instalment of Rs 67 crore is pending in January. If we don’t get it on time, we will not be able to pay salaries to employees in February and March.” 

The MC entered the present fiscal with Rs 225 crore in the fixed deposit. Of this, Rs 100 crore have already been spent to meet various expenses. 

‘Need to generate revenue’

Admitting the severity of the situation, municipal commissioner Jitender Yadav told HT that the civic body is heading towards a major financial crisis.

“I have asked the chief accounts officer to prepare a white paper on the financial condition, so that we can work out how to sort out the issue and minimise expenditure,” he said. 

Yadav said unless the MC is able to generate additional revenue, “we will not be able to carry out development projects in the city as we are short of 30 crore even to pay salaries”. 

The major works that will be hit include maintenance of roads and water supply.

Meanwhile, Chandigarh Congress chief Pardeep Chhabra blamed lack of coordination between Member Parliament Kirron Kher and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led MC for the impending crisis.

“It is the MP’s prime duty to arrange funds from the Union ministry of finance. The mayor never consulted the MP on this issue,” he said. 

Former mayor Subhash Chawla said the MC never faced such a crisis during the 15-year tenure of Congress leader Pawan Kumar Bansal.

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  • ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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    Hillary Victor is a Principal Correspondent at Chandigarh. He covers Chandigarh administration, municipal corporation and all political parties.

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