Mumbai: BMC's tall budget claims and lofty targets only on paper

Coastal Road construction seen at Worli sea face in January. Pic/Ashish Raje

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's commissioner has proposed to spend a whopping Rs 18,000 crore on development projects in the upcoming financial year, also an election year. However, records show that the civic body achieves only a fraction of its development targets, with expenditure on projects not having crossed R5,500 crore in the past decade. The mark was crossed only in the past two years due to the large-scale funding of the Coastal Road and of the BEST.

In the last election year, 2016-17, the civic body undertook development worth only Rs 3,850 crore, around 30 per cent, despite a budget estimate of Rs 12,958 crore. This year, municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal has proposed Rs 18,751 crore for capital expenditure meant for projects like construction of roads, widening of stormwater drainage, laying of water lines, building hospitals and schools, developing gardens, etc.

The remaining Rs 20,287 from the total budget of R39,038 will be spent on establishment expenses like salaries and maintenance. Chahal increased the project expenses by 30 per cent from last year. But that does not mean the city would transform before the corporation election.

In 2011-12, 52 per cent of capital expenditure was spent on projects. While the expenditure in 2019-20 reached R7,569 crore, R2,150 crore was given to the BEST as financial assistance. In the current pandemic year, the expenses seem to be increasing due to the coastal road (R1,189 crore) and assistance to BEST (R1,000 crore), a transport wing which has a separate budget.

Ravi Raja, Leader of Opposition, termed the budget as a number game. "The budgets are just showing dreams that will confuse the citizens of Mumbai," he said. "The budget is just a manipulation of numbers and there are illusory dreams of development. The reality is different than the budget," said Prabhakar Shinde, group leader of BJP.