After no news on the long-overdue Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) elections, the BBMP has now put off the budget announcement for the city council without giving a clear indication on the next date of the announcement.
The BBMP administrator did not respond to repeated requests for comment by Hindustan Times in this matter.
This comes on the back of obscurity over the dates of BBMP's impending elections since September 2020 after the city council's term expired. The Karnataka High Court had earlier directed the State Election Commission to schedule the polls for 198 wards within six weeks in December 2020. They were earlier scheduled for March, but have been delayed further.
A BBMP official had told a local news website that the budget announcement coming within the current financial year would solve several administrative problems within the local body.
The presentation of the budget was reportedly put off at the last minute over a dispute regarding the perceived allocation of funds to the Assembly constituencies represented by those who defected from Congress.
A group of ministers reportedly expressed disapproval and demanded that another round of discussion be held with the city ministers, especially Minister for Revenue R Ashok, Minister for Higher Education C N Ashwath Narayan and the Minister for Excise K Gopalaiah.
{{/usCountry}}A group of ministers reportedly expressed disapproval and demanded that another round of discussion be held with the city ministers, especially Minister for Revenue R Ashok, Minister for Higher Education C N Ashwath Narayan and the Minister for Excise K Gopalaiah.
{{/usCountry}}According to reports, the ministers were unhappy with top BBMP officials for not taking Ashok and Narayan into confidence before allocating the said funds.
The Budget will be presented by the civic chief and approved by the administrator in the absence of the elected council. As per Section 196 of the BBMP Act, the local body's budget is supposed to be announced at least three weeks prior to the start of the next fiscal year. Accordingly, the budget should ideally have been presented within March 10.
Meanwhile, the #MyCityMyBudget campaign by BBMP in collaboration with NGO Janaagraha has received 7,238 inputs in total by Bengaluru citizens.
About 46% of the inputs were in demand for public toilets, 30% for footpath improvements and 24% for parks.
Most budget inputs came from Shantala Nagar, Ramamurthy Nagar and Sanjay Nagar wards, while the top three zones that received most inputs were East, South and Bommanahalli.