MC budget session on March 31

Rachna Khaira

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, March 27

The general house of the Municipal Corporation of Jalandhar (MCJ) will have its last budget session of the present term on March 31 this year.

While informing this, Mayor Sunil Jyoti said this year the budget was expected to be around Rs 575 crore which besides having Rs 334 crore as revenue income would also include Rs 200 crore as various grants from the Central government. Also, the civic body has managed to save Rs 41 crore from the last year’s budget.

This year, the budget is expected to keep around 38 per cent of its share on development works. The budget this year is less as compared to last year. Last year, the budget was kept at Rs 603.68 crore.

Although all the departments have tried hard to increase the revenue of the civic body, majority of them could not achieve targets set in the beginning of the year.

While property tax target was kept at Rs 30 crore, the department could only recover Rs 25 crore till date. Also, the target for water supply was set at Rs 32 crore, but the department could only recover Rs 22 crore till date.

Although some departments showed an increase in their revenue which majorly included the Teh Bazaari Department which managed to earn Rs 5 lakh more this year taking the revenue to Rs 85 lakh.

The rent department also recovered Rs 95 lakh in the current financial year. Even Health Department too got activated this year and earned Rs 10 lakhs from various challans.

Besides, the civic authorities have decided to make the city green. The Municipal Corporation of Jalandhar has planned to increase the forest cover from the current three percent to 15 per cent in the next few years.

While informing this, Mayor Sunil Jyoti said that a separate grant of Rs 2.50 crore from the AMRUT scheme had been kept to install small tubewells on vacant MC lands and green area would be developed at these places in various parts of the city.