BMC budget: ₹50L to sponsor college education of 25 civic school toppers

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), in its budget released on Tuesday, reserved ₹50 lakh to give scholarships to 25 toppers from civic schools for education

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), in its budget released on Tuesday, reserved ₹50 lakh to give scholarships to 25 toppers from civic schools for education up to graduation. The budgetary estimates for education for 2020-21 are ₹2,944.59 crore, up by ₹210.82 crore from 2019-20.

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Other initiatives include opening a CBSE and ICSE school on a pilot basis, introduction of water break bells in schools, digital observatory for students and providing hand sanitisers for students in special schools.

No specific budgetary allocation is made for affiliation to CBSE and ICSE boards.

“These schools will operate within the existing school buildings, while the staff will also be recruited from among the existing teachers. The affiliation

fee will have to be paid to the boards after a few years, so there is no mention of a separate budgetary provision for it at the moment,” said Ashutosh Salil, joint municipal commissioner of the BMC. The civic body has decided to grant powers to head-teachers to make temporary appointments against vacant posts. A budget of ₹10 lakh is also reserved for upgrading old file storage system in offices to modular sliding file storage system to better the ambiance of offices and ensure more shelf life for documents. Some of the initiatives that the BMC had promised to take up last year, but will be implemented this year include

installation of CCTV cameras in schools, installing play equipment in 84 civic schools and providing counselling to students.

After the budget was presented and discussed, members of the education committee demanded the appointment of the second education officer as the post has been lying vacant for a long time now.