MCD councillors: Have money, won’t spend

With the financial year coming to an end, only 31 out of the 272 municipal councillors have managed to spend all of their Rs 50 lakh of the councillor fund on developmental work in their area.

With the financial year coming to an end, only 31 out of the 272 municipal councillors have managed to spend all of their Rs 50 lakh of the councillor fund on developmental work in their area.

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Not only this, there are 51 others who have spent only Rs 30 lakh so far.

This, when the city roads are plotted with potholes, garbage is strewn on the streets and streetlights don’t function.

What is worse is that if the money is not spent by March it will lapse.

The councillor fund is given to all 272 councillors to be used for repairing drainage systems, construction of new streets roads, footpaths and a number of other works.

“Development is last thing on their mind, even though they are elected by the public solely for this. And when we tell councillors about our problems, they make excuses saying that they don’t have the required funds,” said V K Arora a resident of Krishna Nagar in east Delhi.

There are also a number of councillors who have managed to spend only R10 lakh out of the total fund, and MCD officials said that they would not be able to spend the rest in this financial year, as paper work takes a lot of time to be completed.