Tiwari dares CM to debate on civic funds

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 11

BJP president Manoj Tiwari has today challenged Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for a public debate on the issue of municipal funds and neglect of development in the city during the last two years.

Tiwari has said the government records tell that expenditure on development has gone down during the last two years. The government is withholding implementation of the Fourth Delhi Finance Commission recommendations on revenue share of civic bodies.

The government presented and accepted the Finance Commission recommendations in the Assembly following High Court's intervention, but failed to implement them denying working opportunities to the civic bodies. This is being done to defame the BJP-ruled MCD and its leadership, he said.

He said that the government claimed to have given more funds to the municipal corporations, but the fact was that the funds given were not even half of what they were entitled to as per the Finance Commission recommendations.

At the time of trifurcation of the MCD done by the Sheila Dikshit regime in 2012, the government was supposed to meet all funding needs of the three corporations, but the erstwhile government and now the Kejriwal government failed to do this.

The East Delhi Municipal Corporation’s salary bill is around Rs 1,600 crore while its total revenue is Rs 400 crore. The government has just funded around Rs 609 crore.