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Mayor Harpreet Kaur Babla meets UT administrator, seeks 170 crore addl grant for Chandigarh MC

By, Chandigarh
Feb 05, 2025 09:32 AM IST

Newly elected mayor Harpreet Kaur Babla requested the administrator to issue necessary directions to the UT to release these funds to ensure that the civic body is able to pay salary, pension, electricity bills, fuel costs, and other essential expenditures for February and March 2025.

Amid the ongoing fiscal crisis, newly elected mayor Harpreet Kaur Babla on Tuesday met UT administrator Gulab Chand Kataria and sought urgent additional grant of 170 crore for the Chandigarh municipal corporation (MC) to meet liabilities including salaries of employees.

Newly elected mayor Harpreet Kaur Babla met UT administrator Gulab Chand Kataria on Tuesday. (HT File)
Newly elected mayor Harpreet Kaur Babla met UT administrator Gulab Chand Kataria on Tuesday. (HT File)

Babla requested the administrator to issue necessary directions to the UT to release these funds to ensure that the civic body is able to pay salary, pension, electricity bills, fuel costs, and other essential expenditures for February and March 2025.

Soon after the Babla’s victory in the recent mayoral elections, BJP president Jatinder Malhotra had announced that the Centre has approved a special grant of 92 crore but the MC is yet to receive these funds.

“The MC is playing a crucial role in maintaining and developing the city’s infrastructure, ensuring sanitation, and providing essential public services on a no-profit, no-loss basis. However, despite its relentless efforts, the corporation is facing a severe financial crunch, hampering its ability to continue these vital functions. The MC maintains 2,000 km of roads and 270 km of roads are constructed or repaired annually. Besides, MC maintains 1,800 neighborhood parks, over 100 large parks, and green belts, along with 1.75 lakh trees and bushes. MC is also responsible for garbage collection, segregation, processing, and sterilisation of stray animals. Moreover, MC bears the full cost of maintaining streetlights on key roads (V-3, V-4, V-5, and V-6) without any financial assistance from the administration,” Babla said.

“Despite its expanding responsibilities, MC has received only 560 crore in grant-in-aid for the 2024-25 financial year, against a demand of 1,651.75 crore. In response to the financial crisis, the MC has implemented several cost-cutting measures, including, reducing outsourcing staff, minimising vehicle expenses for officers/officials, cutting costs in events like the Chrysanthemum Show 2024, reducing expenses for general house meetings by 50%, voluntary surrender of 50% entertainment expenses by senior officers, and others,” Babla added.

The MC has successfully recovered 14.15 crore from defaulters of water tariffs, property tax, and vendor charges, even canceling 6,841 vendor sites due to non-payment.

The mayor said that the administrator assured full support from the Chandigarh administration and directed the officers concerned to convene an urgent meeting shortly to discuss the financial status of MC Chandigarh in detail.

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