Chandigarh MC clears Budget with Rs 670-cr deficit

Sandeep Rana
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, February 5

The Chandigarh Municipal Corporation today cleared a Rs670-crore deficit Budget for the fiscal 2021-22 in its usual anticipation of getting grant-in-aid (GIA) as per the Fourth Delhi Finance Commission recommendations, just like previous years.

In a special Budget meeting, the MC House cleared a Rs1,641-crore total Budget — Rs1,197.55 crore under revenue head and Rs443.45 crore under capital head. However, the MC’s own earning will be Rs469.78 crore and it has got only Rs502 crore GIA in the recently announced Union Budget. Thus, it will fall short of Rs 670 crore to meet its expenditure in the next financial year.

“Why the Budget is slashed every year? What we get is peanuts as compared to our expenditure. Give us a surety that the deficit amount will be given to us,” Congress councillor Gurbax Rawat asked Mayor Ravi Kant Sharma during the House meeting. The Mayor, who is from the ruling BJP, assured the House that this year they would get funds from the Centre and no work would be left pending. “There will be no new taxes in this fiscal,” he said in his address. Last year also, the MC had approved a Rs650-crore deficit Budget. It had sought Rs1,074 crore GIA, but had got only Rs425 crore from the UT Administration. In 2019, the MC had written to the Administration to grant it funds as per the latest recommendations of the Finance Commission.

UT Administrator VP Singh Badnore had then written to the Centre in this regard. Till date, the MC has not got its entire share. The commission had recommended an increase in the MC’s share in the UT revenue from 17.5 per cent to 30 per cent.

Though its GIA increased from Rs375 crore in the 2019-20 financial year to Rs425 crore in the fiscal 2020-21 and now to Rs502 crore, it’s not enough to fill its empty coffers. If the corporation does not get funds, works like ward development, sewerage and other infrastructural jobs will be hit.